Steven gave me the most amazing note, actually. He said, give me your war face, and the camera’s gonna move across. And as you feel it come up in front of you, I want you to de-age yourself by 20 years. So you’re 29, and then when you see those machine guns, you’re nine years old. I want to see the child in you. And I just thought that was one of the most astonishing acting notes I’d ever been given.
- Tom Hiddleston
Bill Murray Crashes a Wes Anderson Interview at Cannes
“All you can do is have stock in a human being, and I feel like all my stock has really increased in value many, many times.” - Bill Murray.
Tell us a joke.
Your life has meaning.Tell us a secret.
Your life has meaning.
![criterioncorner:
THE 5 BEST QUOTES FROM MICHEL GONDRY’S BEING JOHN MALKOVICH COMMENTARY
someone at Criterion got the brilliant idea of getting Spike Jonze’s close friend / arch-nemesis Michel Gondry to record the commentary track on their Being John Malkovich release. some legal shenanigans have prevented Criterion from using the entire track, but the selected-scene commentary that’s included on the disc packs an absurd amount of genius into its 57 minutes. Gondry isn’t shy about his bitter rivalry with Jonze — most of the track is a hilarious meta-commentary on the perils of jealousy among artists, as Gondry, to put it generously, gets a *bit* distracted from the task at hand.
this is something that you should really experience for yourself, so all the quotes i’ve included below have been plucked exclusively from the first 15 minutes of the commentary. it only gets more amazing from here. trust.
(note: best read with a very thick French accent. all of Gondry’s imaginative sentence structure has been kept intact)
Gondry on the opening credits:
“What the fuck? I didn’t do this movie! I’ve been tricked.”
Gondry discussing an encounter he and Spike Jonze had when they were struggling to get their first films into production:
“We run into the guy who did Buffalo 66 (Vincent Gallo), and he said he’s gonna retire from movies and become a lawyer. And he’s such an asshole, talking to us who are struggling to have a movie made and he’s complaining cause he has too much work? I felt like he was, uh… just an arrogant bastard. So everyone hate him after this commentary.”
Gondry on the introduction of Mr. Lester:
“I don’t know who this actor is, I bet he’s not alive anymore. It’s kinda gross to watch movies, everyone is dead… I remember watching the movie and thinking the shoes of the guy survived the guy, the guy was dead, but maybe his shoes were somewhere still functioning. Anyway, I’m supposed to be talking about this movie… who is this actor? [Gondry is told it’s Orson Bean] Is he still alive… [a few moments pass] Great news, Orson Bean is still alive.”
Gondry on the Malkovich portal:
“Charlie imagined more of a vagina, but Spike imagined more of an asshole, I guess it’s just a matter of taste.”
Gondry trying to get back on task:
“Jealousy is a very ugly feeling, and i hate to have this feeling, so the best way to get rid of it is to say to everyone, and this is retarded because everyone thinks i’m a bitter person, which i don’t think i am. Oh, here he’s finding the portal.”](http://25.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_m3vgh0H2y61qebry0o1_r2_1280.jpg)
THE 5 BEST QUOTES FROM MICHEL GONDRY’S BEING JOHN MALKOVICH COMMENTARY
someone at Criterion got the brilliant idea of getting Spike Jonze’s close friend / arch-nemesis Michel Gondry to record the commentary track on their Being John Malkovich release. some legal shenanigans have prevented Criterion from using the entire track, but the selected-scene commentary that’s included on the disc packs an absurd amount of genius into its 57 minutes. Gondry isn’t shy about his bitter rivalry with Jonze — most of the track is a hilarious meta-commentary on the perils of jealousy among artists, as Gondry, to put it generously, gets a *bit* distracted from the task at hand.
this is something that you should really experience for yourself, so all the quotes i’ve included below have been plucked exclusively from the first 15 minutes of the commentary. it only gets more amazing from here. trust.
(note: best read with a very thick French accent. all of Gondry’s imaginative sentence structure has been kept intact)
Gondry on the opening credits:
“What the fuck? I didn’t do this movie! I’ve been tricked.”
Gondry discussing an encounter he and Spike Jonze had when they were struggling to get their first films into production:
“We run into the guy who did Buffalo 66 (Vincent Gallo), and he said he’s gonna retire from movies and become a lawyer. And he’s such an asshole, talking to us who are struggling to have a movie made and he’s complaining cause he has too much work? I felt like he was, uh… just an arrogant bastard. So everyone hate him after this commentary.”
Gondry on the introduction of Mr. Lester:
“I don’t know who this actor is, I bet he’s not alive anymore. It’s kinda gross to watch movies, everyone is dead… I remember watching the movie and thinking the shoes of the guy survived the guy, the guy was dead, but maybe his shoes were somewhere still functioning. Anyway, I’m supposed to be talking about this movie… who is this actor? [Gondry is told it’s Orson Bean] Is he still alive… [a few moments pass] Great news, Orson Bean is still alive.”
Gondry on the Malkovich portal:
“Charlie imagined more of a vagina, but Spike imagined more of an asshole, I guess it’s just a matter of taste.”
Gondry trying to get back on task:
“Jealousy is a very ugly feeling, and i hate to have this feeling, so the best way to get rid of it is to say to everyone, and this is retarded because everyone thinks i’m a bitter person, which i don’t think i am. Oh, here he’s finding the portal.”
“Wes Anderson has a very special kind of talent: He knows how to convey the simple joys and interactions between people so well and with such richness. This kind of sensibility is rare in movies.”
Martin Scorsese on Wes Anderson (born May 1, 1969)
6 Filmmaking Tips from David Fincher
That thing about looking at each setup with one eye at a time kind of blew my mind. I can’t wait to try that. And totally agree about what you learn on your first movie.1) “What you learn from that first [film] - and I don’t call it ‘trial by fire’; I call it ‘baptism by fire’ - is that you are going to have to take all of the responsibility, because basically when it gets right down to it, you are going to get all of the blame, so you might as well have made all of the decisions that led to people either liking it or disliking it. There’s nothing worse than hearing somebody say, ‘Oh, you made that movie? I thought that movie sucked,’ and you have to agree with them, you know?”
2) “I never fall in love with anything. I really don’t, I am not joking. ‘Do the best you can, try to live it down,’ that’s my motto. Just literally give it everything you got, and then know that it’s never going to turn out the way you want it to, and let it go, and hope that it doesn’t return. Because you want it to be better than it can ever turn out. Absolutely, 1000 percent, I believe this: Whenever a director friend of mine says, ‘Man, the dailies look amazing!’ … I actually believe that anybody, who thinks that their dailies look amazing doesn’t understand the power of cinema; doesn’t understand what cinema is capable of.”
3) “A friend of mine once, he was directing his first film and he called me and said, ‘How many takes can I ask for?’ And I said, ‘What do you mean?’ ‘Well I’m working with this actress and she said that she’s only going to give me six takes.’ And I said, ‘As far as I’m concerned, you ask for whatever it is you need.’ I’ve never understood… It’s not about an actor presenting their work to forty people around them. It’s about, you know, it’s the boom operator, it’s the camera operator, it’s can you tweak the light better, can the person hit their mark better, can they be in focus. There’s so many aspects, it’s not just about the actor. That’s the focus of what you’re trying to get, but it’s a ballet between so many different people. And to me that’s the thing, to make it all coalesce, to make it look effortless.”
4) In the commentary track for Se7en, Fincher explains that when he was working at ILM, he was taught that a director should look at each scene’s set up with each eye individually. Left eye for composition (because it’s connected to the creative right side of the brain). Right eye for focus and technical specs (because it’s connected to the mathematical left side of the brain).
5) “A movie is made for an audience and a film is made for both the audience and the filmmakers. I think that The Game is a movie and I think Fight Club’s a film. I think that Fight Club is more than the sum of its parts, whereas Panic Room is the sum of its parts. I didn’t look at Panic Room and think: Wow, this is gonna set the world on fire. These are footnote movies, guilty pleasure movies. Thrillers. Woman-trapped-in-a-house movies. They’re not particularly important.”
6) “You can’t take everything on. That’s why when people ask how does this film fit into my oeuvre. I say ‘I don’t know. I don’t think in those terms’. If I did, I might become incapacitated by fear … How do you eat a whale? One bite at a time. How do you shoot a 150-day movie? You shoot it one day at a time.”
sound-and-picture-moving-in-time:
On-Set Footage of Steven Spielberg directing JURASSIC PARK.
I particularly like the parts where he’s talking to Dean Cundey, the D.P. and where he’s blocking the actors.
M. Night Shyamalan is somewhat the butt of the jokes right now but let’s remember Unbreakable
Four Pieces of Unbreakable, commentary by Jim Emerson
"
Film school was so theoretical, and there were so many rules that really fucked me up. There was one rule in particular they were always teaching, and it was right out of good old Syd Field’s book Screenplay. And it had a lot to do with ‘theme.’ The theme of the movie is always this leads to that. ‘Jealousy’ leads to ‘downfall.’ One thing leads to another, which leads to another, which leads to the end. Everything is set up in a logical, well-thought-out manner.
But I couldn’t do that; I was just unable to break down a movie that way. It messed up for years. I couldn’t even get out of the gate, because I couldn’t make anything work. I would get hung up on semantics and minutiae. And because I’m such a rule-follower, when I first started out this killed me because it was so theoretical.
"— Paul Feig (via synecdoche)
In a 2011 interview with NPR, Wil Wheaton attributed the film’s success to the director’s casting choices: “Rob Reiner found four young boys who basically were the characters we played. I was awkward and nerdy and shy and uncomfortable in my own skin and really, really sensitive, and River was cool and really smart and passionate and even at that age kind of like a father figure to some of us, Jerry was one of the funniest people I had ever seen in my life, either before or since, and Corey was unbelievably angry and in an incredible amount of pain and had an absolutely terrible relationship with his parents.”
"I’ve done lots of films with first directors, so it’s not unusual for me. I’d say the film to avoid is a director’s second film, particularly if his first film was a big success. The second film is where you’ve really needed to have learned something. The first film is everything you want to say and how you want to say it. Lots of directors will do that and do it really well, but the second film is not so easy."
