In most films - especially in regards to the protagonist - really from the get-go they set up some scenario that endears that character to the audience. Or imbues him with some nobility or heroism or something.
If you're an artist working in China, you become aware that there are things you have to give up in order to practice your art. For the most part, you know what they are. With my first three films, the consequences of making them was that I had to forgo the possibility of releasing them theatrically in China.
[Some] times I'd have sound but no image. When Patti [Smith] was singing with her guitar, or doing something amazing with her clarinet, I'd just mess around and record the sound. So we'd use those sounds as another layer in the film [Dream of Life].
I make film to make time pass.
I have to tell everyone that when I finish a film and it goes out and is released, I never look at my films again. I don't like looking back. I don't even like talking about 'em! So I'm really digging back in my memory because I don't like to sit and look at my films again.
Pulp Fiction won the Palme d'Or and people said: "Wait a minute, he's actually smart and he knows what he's doing!" I feel that with Hostel, any time you make a film like that it's going to illicit a strong reaction and you can't worry about that.
For the film maker must come by his convention, as painters and writers and musicians have done before him.
I think great filmmakers will always talk in terms of storytelling. These guys were always about the story. That is how I love to talk about a film.
I enjoy the physicality a little more, with Vinnie Paz [in Bleed for This] that was the most prep I've ever had to do for a film, that was a legit like 7 months of diet and working out. And then I was able to do like an accent, I was able to change myself physically, I was able to do a lot of the things that I'd always looked at actors and admired when they did that. So I was excited to do that.
I always liked film as a teaching tool - a way of getting exposed to ideas that had never been presented to me. It just wasn't on the list of career options where I grew up.
I feel like if a film is well-written, then the character's arc is complete. There really is very little room to expand on that afterwards.
Well, there's two things I have criteria for doing a film: The script, which is the story, and the filmmaker, and it's a filmmaker's medium. I like really strong directors, and so when I do a film, I'm out there to serve the director, really, which is in turn to serve the script, to serve the director cause he's the one making the film. I relied on Todd Haynes for that.
Films take up so much time, and with theatre, you do have to plan a period of time that you can be free.
I watched every single Charlie Chaplin film.
My kids love it. I thought I was the coolest dad in the world when I got to be in a Bond film, but 'Harry Potter', too? Well, I think I qualify for a medal for exceptional parenting or something, don't you?
When I got cast in 'Rocky IV,' I had never seen a film camera before. And here I was in this boxing movie.
You always have to give back to the fans. I remember being a fan of television and film when I was growing up and if I would've had the opportunity to meet somebody that I watched on television, it would've made my day, it would've made my life.
Theater and film are essentially the same - just different kinds of storytelling.
I would love to. A dream of mine is to produce films, as well as to produce content for television.
I just hope that my films will survive me.