I was watching TCM [the film channel Turner Classic Movies] recently – which is one of the reasons to stay alive in the world – but I had it in the streaming version where you can pick from all the movies at once. What's strange is that I missed actually having it on cable and being presented with a single movie at a time, and enjoying that happenstance of a film just being on: you didn't select it, you didn't have to sit there and think: ‘What should I watch?' You feel a deeper connection to things when they're not totally being administered by your every whim. And, in a weird way, I think it changes desire. When everything is available at once, we don't want it any more.
Todd Haynes, Who turned out the lights? How the decade's final month changed cinema for ever, 13 December 2019

For young people, the idea of sitting and watching one thing for two hours is just not culturally central. The 20-year-olds of this world are more invested in YouTube and TikTok and that more immediate, less ‘produced' kind of media. There is a lot more competition for their attention these days and film is not really a medium that is well suited to that. If you're doing film right, you want some silence, some sense of time stretching out: that's part of the art of film, and I do think it's harder to create space for that in the modern attention economy.
Russell Brandom, Who turned out the lights? How the decade's final month changed cinema for ever, 13 December 2019

Nothing is said. It is all felt. The Piano arrived at a time when most films depicting female sexuality were directed by men. I've always considered Jane Campion's vision ground zero for the female gaze.
Melissa Silverstein, Why The Piano is the greatest film directed by a woman, 26 November 2019

The concept of the ‘female gaze' could be seen as a response to feminist film theorist Laura Mulvey's term, the ‘male gaze', which represents the gaze of a heterosexual male viewer along with the male character and the male creator of the film. According to Time Out's global film editor, Phil de Semlyen: “I find the female gaze easier to define in terms of what it isn't than what it is: it's not about objectifying the female form or replacing fully-realised female characters with loose avatars for male sexual fantasy; it's not framing sex scenes with tropes common to pornography aimed at men; it's not about automatically relinquishing power and control to men in storytelling.”
Anna Smith, Top 100 films directed by women: What is the ‘female gaze'?, 27 November 2019

All my movies are about loving someone no matter what. All of them.
Guillermo Del Toro, Guillermo Del Toro on Writing, Directing and the Essence of Being, 29 April 2019

It sounds shitty, but I feel the need to be truthful. Every question I hear when I speak at colleges or film festivals is, 'How can I get my script in the hands of someone who is gonna help me get it made? How do I get an agent?' The answer to those questions is, figure out how to make a great movie without anybody's help. Do it on your own, in your local community, with the resources you have at hand. There are no good movies out there, so when you make a good one, someone's going to find it.
... Make short films every weekend while you figure out what your voice is. Stop going out to eat. Jay and I lived off $7,000 a year forever and saved our money. Make a $100,000 feature with a borrowed camera that goes to a film festival, maybe not even Sundance. Maybe Florida Film Festival. Then, you'll get an agent. That agent will have access to semi-famous actors inside their agency and you'll build your next movie. You'll pay them the $125/day SAG Ultra-Low-Budge Rate. Make that movie. Then, you get foreign distribution because of the star. It's a step-by-step incremental process that continually puts the power in your hands and never put you in the place of saying, 'I'm so excited to make this movie as soon as someone gives me the money.'
Mark Duplass, Mark Duplass' 9 Secrets to Launching a Career in Indie Film, 27 July 2017

Once I finish a film, I never see it again. Sometimes I have to do an upgrade on format or whatever, but there's no sound and it's out of order, and I cringe anyway, watching the thing. My friends and peers—Alejandro, Guillermo—consider their films their babies that they've nurtured through life. They love them and stuff. For me, it's more like ex-wives. I love them so much, but I gave as much as I could. They gave me as much as they could. We move on and we love each other from a distance, but I don't want to see them again.
Alfonso Cuarón, 10 Revealing Lessons from Alfonso Cuarón's Cannes Masterclass: 'My Films Are Like Ex-Wives', 30 May 2017

To me, visual is narrative. Film is analyzed incorrectly most of the time, as content and style—but those are not separate entities. Colors, light, design, texture...all of those are narrative elements. [Film is] like a Gauguin painting. You have to analyze the brush strokes, the vigor of the color palette—not just the fact that it depicts women laying around on the floor with fruit. It's vibrant and powerful, with confident, thick brush strokes….We don't look at film that way, but we fucking should.
... You need to choose projects that need you to exist: if you don't make them, nobody will. To me, the beauty of film is when someone connects with the movie on a molecular level; when art resonates personally and shapes who you are.
... Almost no one is good at everything, but we are not just the good parts of what we do; we are also the bad parts. Your style emerges out of the things you don't do well. [Stanley Kubrick's] first feature, Fear and Desire, is incredibly stiff and creaky, but it is exactly his style. What later became parsimonious and controlled — the essence of Kubrick — started out as a defect.
Guillermo Del Toro, Guillermo Del Toro's 11 Rules for Becoming a Visionary Filmmaker, 21 June 2016

บันทึก: กำลังติดตามอยู่ตอนนี้

I also have to wonder if [ Velvet Goldmine ] something of an indictment of David Bowie. Brian Slade, the Bowie character, passes himself as this queer alien, but then distances himself from it and denounces it. Bowie passed himself off as this genderfluid, bisexual icon, and then denounced it. He distanced himself, claiming it was all an act... In some ways, is the film meant to call Bowie out on that betrayal? The idea that queer people craved this icon, and that he abandoned his people. He abandoned his revolution.
No. It doesn't mean to settle. Like all movies, you can replay them and find your anchor and your footing and almost forget the rest. Bowie produced all of this. [ Velvet Goldmine ] is kind of all the personas of Bowie, sort of what I tried to do in the Dylan film [ I'm Not There ]. All of the things he created become his own pros and cons... He unwrites his own history. He contradicts himself. He kills himself off. All these guys that challenge the stability of identity or sexuality or gender, they are in a process of reinventing themselves. That means killing yourself off and rebirthing yourself. I saw that in the glam rock moment, but also a celebration of artifice and camp and fluidity and a kind of protean sense of self. And I also saw that in Dylan with an even bigger kind of cultural desire to make him stay put. He kept having to slap it back in the face. I love that about these kinds of artists. They question the idea that identity is natural or stable or coherent. That's also the artistic instinct that keeps them going as artists.
Todd Haynes, “I made something that is outside the box” Todd Haynes on crafting a thriller with ‘Dark Waters', 22 November 2019

If I started my career now, you might not hear about me. I couldn't break through this noise... Maybe I'll just become one with the art where Kevin Smith is no longer an individual, he's just a concept of these series of movies. Until people are like, ‘Who is Kevin Smith?' because they don't watch movies any more – but that's what the handprints [on Hollywood Boulevard] are about.
Kevin Smith, Director Kevin Smith on heart attacks, happiness, extreme weight loss – and Weinstein, 18 November 2019

We choose to define cinema as a film that binds people together and creates a sense of community around the narrative. Very few movies in history have been able to bring audiences around the world together and have an emotional experience in a movie theater. We were in those theaters when that movie premiered and heard at every screening the cheers and the audible sighs and the cries of anguish and the cries of surprise. It's very rare that that happens with several hundred people together in a theater. In a lot of ways it felt historic.
... It seems anathema to the very nature of art to try to define it. But at the end of the day, what do we know? We're just two guys from Cleveland, Ohio. I think ‘cinema' is a New York word. In Cleveland, we just call them ‘movies.'
Joe Russo, ‘Avengers: Endgame' Directors Joe and Anthony Russo on Scorsese's ‘Absurd' Stand Against Marvel, 21 November 2019

For me, ..., cinema was about revelation — aesthetic, emotional and spiritual revelation. It was about characters — the complexity of people and their contradictory and sometimes paradoxical natures, the way they can hurt one another and love one another and suddenly come face to face with themselves...
... Many of the elements that define cinema as I know it are there in Marvel pictures. What's not there is revelation, mystery or genuine emotional danger. Nothing is at risk. The pictures are made to satisfy a specific set of demands, and they are designed as variations on a finite number of themes.
... They are sequels in name but they are remakes in spirit, and everything in them is officially sanctioned because it can't really be any other way. That's the nature of modern film franchises : market-researched, audience-tested, vetted, modified, revetted and remodified until they're ready for consumption...
... The situation, sadly, is that we now have two separate fields: There's worldwide audiovisual entertainment, and there's cinema. They still overlap from time to time, but that's becoming increasingly rare. And I fear that the financial dominance of one is being used to marginalize and even belittle the existence of the other.
Martin Scorsese, I Said Marvel Movies Aren't Cinema. Let Me Explain., 4 November 2019

I find [superhero films] boring. They're made as commodities … like hamburgers … It's about making a commodity which will make profit for a big corporation – they're a cynical exercise. They're a market exercise and it has nothing to do with the art of cinema.
Ken Loach, Superhero films are 'cynical exercise' to make profits for corporations, 22 October 2019

I don't know that anyone gets anything out of seeing the same movie over and over again. Martin was kind when he said it's not cinema. He didn't say it's despicable, which I just say it is.
Francis Ford Coppola, Scorsese was being kind – Marvel movies are despicable, 21 October 2019

I tried, you know? But that's not cinema. Honestly, the closest I can think of them, as well made as they are, with actors doing the best they can under the circumstances, is theme parks. It isn't the cinema of human beings trying to convey emotional, psychological experiences to another human being.
Martin Scorsese, Martin Scorsese says Marvel movies are 'not cinema', 4 October 2019

Tiny Dancer has a really long lyric, a very cinematic, California-in-the-early-70s lyric, so it had two verses and a middle eight before it even gets to the chorus, and it lent itself to a long buildup. The middle eight sets it up well, then it slows down for a moment – “when I say softly, slowly…” That line suggested a big chorus. I don't remember much about writing it, but I do remember trying to make it sound as Californian as possible. Writing a song like that's a bit like having a wank, really. You want the climax to be good, but you don't want it to be over too quickly – you want to work your way up to it. Bernie's lyric took such a long time to get to the chorus, I thought, “Fuck, the chorus had better be something special when it finally arrives.” And it's “here I come”, literally.
Elton John, 'This is a very good question, Bob Dylan': Elton John, interviewed by famous fans, 12 October 2019

Go try to be funny nowadays with this woke culture. There were articles written about why comedies don't work anymore — I'll tell you why, because all the fucking funny guys are like, ‘Fuck this shit, because I don't want to offend you.'
... It's hard to argue with 30 million people on Twitter. You just can't do it, right? So you just go, ‘I'm out.' I'm out, and you know what? With all my comedies — I think that what comedies, in general, all have in common — is they're irreverent. So I go, ‘How do I do something irreverent, but fuck comedy? Oh I know, let's take the comic book movie universe and turn it on its head with this.' And so that's really where that came from.
Todd Phillips, Todd Phillips Left Comedy to Make ‘Joker' Because ‘Woke Culture' Ruined the Genre, 1 October 2019

Batman (1989) : Before he becomes a green-haired supervillain, he is Jack Napier, the right-hand man of Gotham City's mafia godfather. Once he is Joker-ified, his cackling insanity pays homage to James Cagney in the finale of White Heat... Burton's Batman was part of a Hollywood trend for retro gangster movies.
... The Dark Knight (2008) : In The Killing Joke, the Joker is an anarchist philosopher who argues that it is rational to be irrational. In The Dark Knight, Heath Ledger's scarred and dishevelled “agent of chaos” is similarly keen on teenaged nihilism. “The only sensible way to live in this world is without rules,” he says, as Batman bounces him around a police interview room. Echoing the Generation-X rebels in The Matrix and Fight Club, he doesn't care about stealing diamonds or ruling Gotham City. As Michael Caine's Alfred so memorably puts it: “Some men just want to watch the world burn.”
... Joker (2019) : Todd Phillips's drama presents him more as a victim than a villain, a mummy's boy who kills only those who have been cruel to him, and who would rather go on a date than on a crime spree. But does he really deserve our sympathies? Some commentators have been worrying that the so-called “incel Joker” could encourage mass-shootings. Others have welcomed him as a timely symbol of revolutionary protest.
Nicholas Barber, What the Joker says about the world he terrorises, 4 October 2019

Nowadays it's interesting: I lecture, and I have the younger generation. One question I've gotten is “Why would you put a rape in a movie [Boys Don't Cry ] if that's going to hurt people to watch it?”
... That's not a question you would have gotten ten years ago. The cultural awareness and literacy was of a different nature. These kids are being protected. So I actually walk them through and say “I'll tell you the reason why: because when I read about Brandon Teena, I fell in love with his exuberance and fun and charisma. This cute little human being that I wanted to be like and be with. For all that excitement of what Brandon did, I was so traumatized when I read about the rape.” I was so traumatized when I went to the murder trial and saw those guys. I have the tape with the sheriff interviewing Brandon. That's what Hillary Swank was listening to the night we shot the rape scene. I was so upset and obsessed with this story, that my bringing Brandon Teena to life was my way of healing how much it hurt to have faced losing Brandon. I believe in catharsis. And I'd like people, especially your friends who are scared to watch it, to know: I know I'm a really honest, caring storyteller. Many people have told me they were scared to see the movie, but when they saw it, they felt taken care of.
... I recut the rape scene a hundred times, but we showed it eight different times [in test screenings]. Every time, it was too long and too brutal. People would say “I don't like the rape.” ... I would read these questionnaires and what I eventually realized was if the real rape is brutal and long, the movie version has to be brutal and long but not so brutal and long that it brutalizes you . There's an art to capturing the potency of the experience. Very early on, it was clear to me, I did not want to contribute to the pornography of violence... So we kept screening and I kept cutting it down until the miracle day when the questionnaires said “I don't like rape. I don't like this rape. But I know you've done the best job you've can.” They were saying they didn't look away. So now it's just long enough.
Kimberly Pierce, ‘Boys Don't Cry' at 20: director Kimberly Pierce reflects on a classic, 29 September 2019

We spent probably two weeks writing out the biographies of each and every one of the characters [of Schitt's Creek]. That was one of the greatest gifts my dad [Eugene Levy] gave me, because I really wanted to just write it, and he was the one who said that we needed to take the time to figure out who the people are first, and that the writing was last, the icing on the cake. Once we understood who they were, that's when we had the freedom to push them to their limits, and knew how to bring out their best and worst.
Dan Levy, Ew, David! Dan Levy Is Our Fashion Issue Cover Star, 17 September 2019

I understand that some people left the cinema. As a director, I made ["The Painted Bird" ] without any compromise, but I don't think there is explicit violence. When the miller is putting the spoon on the eye, do you see it? No. The explicit scenes are only in your brain, not in my movie. This film in terms of the violence and brutality is not only very decent, but it is also truthful.
Václav Marhoul, Can cinema still shock?, 13 September 2019

บันทึก: กำลังติดตามอยู่ตอนนี้

Here's the thing: the dilemma for all film-makers. The beauty of cinema is that you're basically walking into Plato's cave. You're going into a darkened room and entering a world you don't know anything about. You're going on a journey and you don't know what to expect. But if you've written the script and raised the money and shot the film and then sat in the editing suite for six months, then you are not going to be able to walk into that world. That experience has been robbed from you. The result is that you can't see the film that you've made. The interpretations of others are more valid than your own.
Jim Jarmusch, Jim Jarmusch: ‘I'm for the survival of beauty. I'm for the mystery of life', 7 July 2019

>> Do you see it as your role as an artist and a film-maker to counteract [social problems] in some way, to shake people up?
Absolutely not, because then you end up making a message film. You see, I get ideas in fragments, and only when a bunch of fragments come together I say: “Oh, this is about this, or this could be about this.” But there's absolutely no message, no steering anyone any which way. I just love the idea. I want to realise them because I'm in love with them.
David Lynch, David Lynch: ‘It's important to go out and feel the so-called reality', 30 June 2019

Don't get me started on Brian De Palma. I re-watched ‘Redacted' last night because [I] thought that given total artistic freedom he could reach for the stars. And he did. But the stars were beyond his reach. The script is trite, it is weak. That's because Brian is trite, Brian is artistically weak. Skate fast on thin ice. That's his story. That's his con.
Paul Schrader, Paul Schrader Criticizes Brian De Palma As ‘Trite and Artistically Weak', 29 June 2019

I've never thought of Hedwig as trans, because of the coercion. Hansel, the boy, was quite comfortable being the feminine gay boy that he was. He was, in a way, forced into a kind of mutilation. There was no choice. There was no agency. It was the patriarchy saying, ‘You've got to do this to be married, to get out, to be free.' So to me, it's more of a statement about the binarchy. Many trans, non-binary, queer, straight people have said it felt activating for them at a certain age. I've never, from people I've actually met, had any negative [reaction], because it's a freeing thing.
John Cameron Mitchell, 20 Years After ‘Hedwig and the Angry Inch,' John Cameron Mitchell Is Just as Radical as Ever, 28 June 2019

I think we had been cast for our ‘essences' without really understanding what our ‘essences' were – and that's outside of our sexuality – we're two straight guys cast in these roles, but who we are, who we were, Ang [Lee] could see.
... And I don't know if I could. So when the movie had the response that it had …. I don't think we recognized what Ang had seen in us so we were blind at the profundity and the echo the movie made … and I don't think we ever had any idea it would have the impact that it had.
Jake Gyllenhaal, Jake Gyllenhaal reflects on ‘Brokeback Mountain' with “two straight guys cast in these roles”, 28 June 2019

The easy way [to shock audiences] doesn't work anymore. Just sex and violence. Hollywood does that and does it badly. They make $75 million gross-out comedies that nobody thinks are that funny. So, that's over. You have to think of a new way [to shock audiences].
... And it does involve political correctness of all the things you can and cannot do in comedy today. But I think that makes it even more of a challenge to pull it off and startle people today.
... In public schools, you can't cast by weight, race, anything. So I've seen ‘Hairspray' with a skinny black girl playing Tracy. It makes no sense, but what's better, the kids don't notice. So that's progress.
John Waters, John Waters Says the Era of the Gross-Out Comedy Is Over, 28 June 2019

Netflix didn't become a monster because people wanted to watch a specific show; it became a monster because people wanted to watch everything... That will be a memory soon. The Netflix model was great for viewers, but it couldn't last. The content creators got greedy and scared, and now they're determined to drag things back to the bad old ways. They will force everyone to pay for everything separately, and the subscriber base will split, and the providers will have to recoup the money they are spending to take on Netflix... which means that subscriptions will rise. Make no mistake: we're the ones likely to get stiffed here. The golden age of television may be going strong, but the golden age of streaming is dead.
Stuart Heritage, Streaming TV is about to get very expensive – here's why, 27 June 2019

The Toy Story franchise is the closest thing we have to an undisputed national anthem, a popular belief that celebrates what we think we all stand for — cooperation, ingenuity, and simple values, such as perpetual hope. This fact of our infantile, desensitized culture became apparent back in 2010 when I took a knee on Toy Story 3 and Rotten Tomatoes sprouted death threats — as if I had made Ilhan Omar–style comments against the history of America and its institutions.
... My heretical point, when writing about Toy Story 3, was that this insulting franchise delimited movies — particularly those targeted at children — as no longer expressive art but mere products synonymous with toys and the utility of toys: All reflection and imagination is left to the manufacturer. There's nothing for the viewer to do but worship the formula.
Armond White, Toy Story 4 : A National Anthem, 21 June 2019

This generation's inability to connect contemporary fright with traditional offense is exactly the same naivete of moviegoers who think the googly-eyed blacks of Get Out and Us are heroes but are unaware that they merely update the Sambo stereotype... Ma is on the same continuum of Hollywood's race hyperconsciousness.
Armond White, Ma 's Black-Mammy Stereotypes Capture the Illiberal Spirit, 7 June 2019

บันทึก: กำลังติดตามอยู่ตอนนี้

We try to put as good a face on as as we can, and sometimes we actually experience real unfettered joy. But to try to hold that joy and freeze it in time and have it never be anything else is a lie. It can never happen for anyone. […] Last night, I was sitting outside and I had a tangible feeling of, ‘Man, I'm really satisfied. I feel fantastic right now. I feel joyful.' But I wasn't deluding myself into thinking, ‘I'm just going to hang onto this forever.' Because tomorrow, you get bad news, and you go down that part of the ride. Hopefully you recover from it as quick as you can, but that's life, you know?
... There are a lot of songs Bob Dylan writes that you don't want to hear the lyrics of — it's confronting, and it brings up painful things. But you know what? When you're going through those painful things and you've just experienced something awful, or you've got the blues because you've lost something important to you, man, that Bob Dylan song is a life raft. That's what this is. This is a life raft.
Jim Carrey, Jim Carrey on ‘Kidding,' Cartoons, and Building a ‘Life Raft' for People in Pain, 19 June 2019

‘Dogville' is a very important film to me. I didn't really see the connection between “Midsommar” and that film until recently. Film Comment asked me to write a very short piece on the film that affected me most, and I had to write about ‘Dogville.' And as I was writing it I was like, ‘oh, shit, I must have at least inadvertently tried to make my “Dogville.” '
Ari Aster, Ari Aster Praises Lars von Trier, Calls ‘Midsommar' His Own Version of ‘Dogville', 19 June 2019

Oh, the best of American cinema of the last decade, probably, for me, is ‘Twin Peaks: The Return,' an 18-hour film that is incomprehensible and dreamlike in the most beautiful, adventurous way. That is a masterpiece. Why can't they just give David Lynch whatever money he needs? Why can't you give Terry Gilliam? He needs money to make something; just give it to him! I don't understand.
Jim Jarmusch, Jim Jarmusch: ‘Twin Peaks: The Return' Is ‘the Best of American Cinema of the Last Decade', 17 June 2019

People disappoint you. Lovers disappoint you. But theatrical memorabilia stays with you, as long as you keep it under clear plastic.
Sylvia Miles, Sylvia Miles obituary, 16 June 2019

In those days in Italy children of purportedly “unknown” fathers were assigned surnames starting with a different letter each year. He was born in the year of Z. His mother chose Zeffiretti, drawing on a word, meaning little breezes, heard in an aria in Mozart's opera “Così Fan Tutte.” A transcription error, however, rendered it Zeffirelli. One problem with the story is that “zeffiretti” does not appear in the libretto. “Aurette,” breezes, does.
... Twice elected to the Italian Parliament, Mr. Zeffirelli was an ultraconservative senator, particularly on the issue of abortion. In a 1996 New Yorker article, he declared that he would “impose the death penalty on women who had abortions.” He said his extreme views on the subject were colored by the fact that he himself was born out of wedlock despite pressure brought to bear on his mother to terminate her pregnancy.
Jonathan Kandell, Franco Zeffirelli, Italian Director With Taste for Excess, Dies at 96, 15 June 2019

[“Chernobyl” ] is not about, ‘Be terrified of nuclear power.' This is about, ‘Be terrified of narrative.' The entire world is just sliding toward marketing. Everything becomes advertising. There are no more people anymore. We don't vote for people. You vote for advertised brands. It is not the truth. And we have to start cutting back to the truth or we're going to get sold. And sometimes the stuff they sell you, it kills you.
Craig Mazin, ‘Chernobyl' Resonated With So Many Viewers by Providing a Canvas for All Our Anxieties, 11 June 2019

Though you have left me, I'm not yet alone:
For what you were befriends the firelit room;
And what you said remains & is my own
To make a living gladness of my gloom
The firelight leaps & shows your empty chair
And all our harmonies of speech are stilled:
But you are with me in the voiceless air
My hands are empty, but my heart is filled.
Siegfried Sassoon, Student unearths long lost gay love poem from famous writer to young lover, 11 June 2019

["Dazed and Confused" ] made $8m on a $6.9m budget. I never made a penny off anything to do with it – I waived most of my rights to pay for the soundtrack. I don't think it's my best movie, but it represents a rite of passage for the “busters”, the end of the baby-boom generation. I also enjoy people who weren't even born then liking the film. It tells you there's something about teenagedom that never changes.
Richard Linklater, Richard Linklater: how we made Dazed and Confused, 11 June 2019

I get frustrated when people say [ "Black Mirror" is ] a show about technology. The stories are hopefully entertaining, very intimate stories about human failures and dilemmas.
Annabel Jones, Charlie Brooker: 'Happy? I have my moments', 1 June 2019

We are doing a supernatural show that has no supernatural element in it, and using that to tell stories that entertain, and that put people in really unusual situations and dilemmas that you can't see elsewhere. That's really what we are trying to do.
Charlie Brooker, Charlie Brooker: 'Happy? I have my moments', 1 June 2019

It was 2006, and I was trying to up come up with ideas for shows. My son Jamie, who was at university at the time, read them all and told me that they were all boring, middle-class, middle-aged rubbish. “If you're so clever, what should I do?” I asked him. Jamie said: “Write a show about teenagers, but one that actually means something.” I didn't quite know what that would be, so I said: “You'd better tell me.” We sat at the kitchen table and came up with Skins in about half an hour.
Bryan Elsley, How we made Skins, 28 May 2019

Note: My favorite TV series of 2019 so far.

Some studios wanted to tone down the sex and drugs so the film would get a PG-13 rating. But I just haven't led a PG-13 rated life. I didn't want a film packed with drugs and sex, but equally, everyone knows I had quite a lot of both during the 70s and 80s, so there didn't seem to be much point in making a movie that implied that after every gig, I'd quietly gone back to my hotel room with only a glass of warm milk and the Gideon's Bible for company.
... And some studios wanted us to lose the fantasy element and make a more straightforward biopic, but that was missing the point. Like I said, I lived in my own head a lot as a kid. And when my career took off, it took off in such a way that it almost didn't seem real to me. I wasn't an overnight success by any means – I'd been slogging around the clubs, making records, writing songs with Bernie and trying to sell them to people who weren't interested for four or five years before anything big happened. But when it happened, it went off like a missile: there's a moment in Rocketman when I'm playing onstage in the Troubadour club in LA and everything in the room starts levitating, me included, and honestly, that's what it felt like.
Elton John, 'They wanted to tone down the sex and drugs. But I haven't led a PG-13 life', 26 May 2019

The avant-garde of yesterday is the wallpaper design of today. Some of the greatest artists of their day, we may have never heard of them. But the ‘failures' like Van Gogh or Rousseau, who had to take his paintings around in a wheelbarrow — you'd give your eyeteeth now to have those paintings. The things you get fired for when you're young are the same things you get Lifetime Achievements for when you're old.
Francis Ford Coppola, Francis Ford Coppola on How ‘Apocalypse Now' Was Deemed a Failure — and Nearly Inventing Smartphones, 22 May 2019

The reason Ian McKellen is so successful in blockbusters is because of his classical background – he brings a gravitas to those films. They're not little kitchen-sink dramas: they need grandeur and presence.
Helen Mirren, 'I even loved his Twankey': Dench, Hopkins, Mirren and more on Ian McKellen at 80, 22 May 2019

Well Marianne, it's come to this time when we are really so old and our bodies are falling apart and I think I will follow you very soon. Know that I am so close behind you that if you stretch out your hand, I think you can reach mine.
... And you know that I've always loved you for your beauty and your wisdom, but I don't need to say anything more about that because you know all about that. But now, I just want to wish you a very good journey. Goodbye old friend. Endless love, see you down the road.
Leonard Cohen, 'You're too much in my heart': Leonard Cohen letters to muse set for auction, 22 May 2019

That hand-painted sign is a perfect replica of the actual hand-painted sign that was there [ at Chernobyl ]. I mean, perfect. I hope people look this up. It basically says, ‘Comrades, our task is to advance the tunnel by this many meters and we work 24/7 to this goal.' We, I think, in the West always kind of giggled at this Soviet, ‘the Workforce for the Motherland' ideal. They didn't. It was real to them and they felt it. Even as the Soviet system would repress them, there was also still an actual communal spirit. And you saw that at Chernobyl, I think better than anywhere else.
Craig Mazin, ‘Chernobyl': Crafting a Wrenching, Devastating Episode that Somehow Found Room for Levity Too, 20 May 2019

My wife's biological father is Fritz Lang, and I've thought, what would my father in law go into today? It would be streaming... The difference between streaming and more traditional theatrical is that streaming is an energy flow around us that runs 24 hours a day and seven days a week, and we can tap into and consume it whenever we want. That is a whole new ideology for how to exist.
Nicolas Winding Refn, Nicolas Winding Refn on His Alejandro Jodorowsky-Endorsed Move to Streaming: ‘This Is the Future', 18 May 2019

When you talk about yourself you necessarily talk about other people's lives as well, so you have to be very careful when you do it. My life is reflected in the film ["Pain and Glory" ] but it mustn't be taken literally. All these things represent me, my way of feeling. I can't give the percentage of what is real. There is a mix.
Pedro Almodóvar, Antonio Banderas: I had to kill my old self for Almodóvar role, 18 May 2019

When I was young, you were told that if you had a skill, you would find a job for life and you could bring up a family on the wage. There has been an inexorable change from that security to the insecurity where people can be hired and fired at a day's notice, where the employer makes no commitment to how much work you'll get, and the worker takes all the risk. It's not capitalism ‘failing', it's capitalism working as it always will.
Ken Loach, Ken Loach: blame 'fake left' politicians like Miliband and Blair for gig economy, 17 May 2019

I thought, ‘Wow this is my opportunity to break into film.' Famous people weren't taking the risk on independent film, and they weren't getting paid to do independent film, so there was no interest for them. But, newcomers couldn't break into film because the studio system was like, ‘We only use famous people.'
... I broke into film with that movie [“Boys Don't Cry” ]. But it was like such a long shot. It was made for nothing; I made $3,000. The idea of making a movie for a certain budget, it was just this brilliant idea of being able to take a risk on telling a story that there is an audience for, you just have to make it to be able to find that audience. Right? Build it, they will come. So it was a super exciting time. Super exciting time for film. And then obviously it took off.
Hilary Swank, Hilary Swank Opens Up About ‘Boys Don't Cry' Backlash, and Examines Its Legacy, 16 May 2019

When the Tribeca Film Festival screening [ of "Apocalypse Now: Final Cut" ] ended, a young female usher with a sweet smile asked me, “Did you just see that Apocalypse movie? Do you know when it's going to open? Because I like zombie films!” She had been misinformed, like most Millennials, but that's not Coppola's fault — it's ours.
Armond White, Apocalypse Now Is More Gripping Than Marvel Universe Escapism, 1 May 2019

บันทึก: กำลังติดตามอยู่ตอนนี้

[ In the opening scene of "Live Flesh", Almodóvar introduces his characters through the cinematic cliche of an unexpected birth on a city bus. The context for this darkly comic opening is provided by a stern voice announcing a state of emergency. As the curfew falls, the characters re-enacting this nativity scene find themselves on the wrong side of the law.]
... My aim is to remind myself and the Spanish people that it would be impossible for us to return to such a dark past because we have lost our sense of fear. My first memory of Francoism is one of fear, fear in a Kafkaesque sense. It is a fear that lodges in your head, a fear of everything. This fear in the atmosphere is no longer there, and that gives me security. The people have matured.
Pedro Almodóvar, Pedro Almodóvar: schlocky king of Spanish sex comedy tackles fascism – archive, 1998, 8 May 2019

Seeing Richard Linklater's Slacker on my 21st birthday showed me that movies didn't have to blow up the Death Star – they could just be a snapshot of where you were in life. Clerks came out of a demand for representation: there was a time when that world of dead-end jobs didn't exist in the movies, when pop culture wasn't the culture, when you didn't see people who talked in movie quotes.
Kevin Smith, Kevin Smith: how we made Clerks, 7 May 2019

From my point of view, this was a chance for me to create a safe space, to face my abuser. All I wanted was to be able to sit down with this guy, via Stephen Graham. I've always been honest about where my stories come from, how personal they are. It would obviously have been easier for me not to talk about this one, but I'm not making an exception. I'm not scared or ashamed any more. Plenty of people have been through far worse and they've told their stories. What happened to me is the reason the series [The Virtues] exists.
... One of the last sessions I had with the psychologist, he said to me, ‘Imagine you could go back and make that event not happen. The risk is that you quite possibly wouldn't be doing what you'd be doing now. Would you go back and change it?' And I know I wouldn't. Having experienced that, and the empathy that comes with it… I'd never swap that in a million years. I certainly wouldn't swap telling stories. That is just part of my life and I've got through it. It's lovely to know I can.
Shane Meadows, ‘For many years I didn't remember it... but it caused me a lifetime of anguish', 5 May 2019

"Vox Lux" is about the desire to be iconic. [The desire] to be remembered at any cost is something that seems to be unique to this generation. We expect celebrities to be our representatives. It's totally fair to come down on a politician for misrepresenting you. But there's a strange expectation of Taylor Swift to take a political stance and support the female Democratic nominees. Even if that's who I support, why should she have [to have] an opinion about it?
Brady Corbet, Vox Lux director Brady Corbet: 'The movie is about the desire to be iconic', 5 May 2019

Likable is the actor's flaw. It's something I've tried to shake off over the years. Most actors want to be liked and we want to make our work beautiful, not clunky and stilted. But that isn't always the best way.
Richard Madden, ‘I don't like the look of me in the mirror', 4 May 2019

I have never interviewed anyone. I have had conversations, but an interview would mean a journalistic attitude with a catalogue of questions. That's the first thing I told [Gorbachev]: ‘I'm not a journalist, I have no paper in my hands. You're talking to a poet.'
Werner Herzog, 'I'm not a pundit. Don't push me into that corner', 2 May 2019

If you want to make art, you have to be comfortable with risk, and taking a chance that you know best... In film-making and in life, extraordinary things happen to you, and it's up to you to make them be positive. Because the good news is that there is no hell, and the quasi-good news is that this is heaven. Don't waste heaven.
Francis Ford Coppola, Is Apocalypse Now: Final Cut the best version we'll ever see?, 29 April 2019

That the decline of the sex scene [ in films ] coincided with the rise of internet porn doesn't seem random at all. When sex is at your fingertips, there's less of a need for it in mainstream entertainment.
... Cinema's extremeness has receded since the 70s, but that has coincided with other media infiltrating the cultural space once owned by film. I don't think we're any less sex-obsessed; I think we're compartmentalising.
Rich Juzwiak, Cut! Is this the death of sex in cinema?, 14 April 2019

บันทึก: เมื่อเพื่อนถามว่าชอบมังงะเรื่องไหนบ้าง

1. Hi no Tori + Buddha >> Osamu Tezuka
2. JoJo's Bizarre Adventure* >> Araki Hirohiko
3. RG Veda + X 1999 >> Clamp
4. Azumi + ไอ ผู้มาจากอวกาศ (Ai ga Yuku) >> Yuu Koyama
5. Hunter x Hunter* >> Yoshihiro Togashi
6. Path of Fujiko F. Fujio SF Collection >> Fujiko F. Fujio
7. ชั่วโมงเรียนพิศวง (Gakkou Kaidan) >> Takahashi Yousuke
8. Wonder Boy + The Life of Genius Professor Yanagizawa + Land* >> Kazumi Yamashita
9. Sasuke + Kamui >> Sanpei Shirato
10. พริกขี้หนูสีรุ้ง (Niji-iro Tohgarashi) + Rough >> Mitsuru Adachi
11. Vagabond* >> Takehiko Inoue
12. Monster >> Naoki Urasawa
13. Blade of the Immortal >> Hiroaki Samura
14. Shigurui >> Yamaguchi Takayuki
(* = ยังไม่จบ)

I don't know how you shoot that film [“The Favourite” ] without being lit. [“The Favourite” used only sunlight and candles]. I've got no time for that, it's absurd! That's like saying this is a better novel because it's written with a quill as opposed to a word processor. I shot digitally on ‘Mr. Turner.' It's a great medium, which a lot of bright people took years to develop.
Mike Leigh, Mike Leigh Got Away with Murder with ‘Peterloo,' But Lost Amazon a Ton of Money, 14 April 2019

[Like Kurosawa, Dick Pope used three cameras (Alexas) and shot on long lenses (Leica Summicrons) to compress all of the elements in the frame and make the backgrounds appear closer for the climactic massacre in “Peterloo”.]
... Even if there is, for instance, a big safety gap between the actors on the ground and the horses racing around in front or behind them, a long lens makes it appear all stacked up. Also, importantly for us, there were 60,000-80,000 people at St Peter's Field that day, and we only had a few hundred [extras] — sometimes a lot fewer. Going longer and stacking them all up was essential in suggesting a bigger crowd.
Dick Pope, How Mike Leigh Shot the Complex, Poetic, Brutal ‘Peterloo' Massacre, 11 April 2019

I think I started figuring it out a little bit on ‘Cosmopolis.' I was so nervous to even ask [David] Cronenberg basic questions — to reveal that I didn't know anything. So I would just sit in my hotel room and obsess over the script. And then, the evening before the first day of the shoot, I called him up and I was like ‘Hi David, I, uh, just want to ask one tiny little question…' I told him that I didn't know what something meant and David just said ‘Well, I don't really know what it means either, to be honest. But isn't it kind of juicy?'
... When I first started acting, I needed to know the psychological profiles of my characters very, very intimately. And then I realized that as soon as I try and do something where I feel like I've got any kind of understanding of it, it's just a disaster. As soon as I have a set plan, it will just go wrong. Trying to almost purely rely on intuition is better. It's easier for me to just guess, basically. I used to have scripts which were covered in notes, and now I have nothing. At all. Pretty much ever.
... Just yesterday Claire [Denis] said that movies should be like songs. Her movies cannot be expressed in any other way — it would be impossible to write ‘High Life' as a short story or something... I loved the end of ‘High Life' so much because it ends on a note that reveals the infinite possibilities of the afterwards. I think there's something so hopeful about literally traveling into the unknown.
Robert Pattinson, Robert Pattinson Explains How He Learned to Trust His Own Talent and Take Big Risks, 5 April 2019

One of the reasons we will never have a Blair Witch Project again is because we'll never have an early internet again. Going viral was difficult in 1999 – we barely had broadband, let alone social media – but it was also a time when people actually believed what they read on the internet... Looking at our current post-factual soup of fake news, conspiracy theory, bogus mythology and untrusted sources, trust in “stuff you read on the internet” is at an all-time low. Could it be that someone noted the efficacy of Blair Witch's viral campaign, based on falsehood, fear and gullibility, and decided it was too good for simply promoting movies? Maybe Blair Witch shaped our political landscape as well as our horror one. Maybe the curse was real after all.
Steve Rose, How The Blair Witch Project changed horror for ever, 8 April 2019

The being alone is the only way to start a movie. If you are not alone, how could an idea crystallize? Something has to be in the loneliness of my daydreaming moments, or in my night, or listening to music. It cannot start in a group. I cannot ask someone to work with me if I don't know what I'm going to do. [There] has to already be something in mind. Precise.
... I think it's because I don't have [pauses] …an understanding what's happening in my life, and in the lives of people I like without support. I have to guess, I have to understand, I have to figure it out. It's not that I want to make films difficult. I don't want to make films mysterious. I think I try to make my best, and I hate when things are explained to me twice, three times, four times, suddenly I'm, “I know, I know. I can't have no more.” Films were at one time not like that. Films were elusive, elliptic, the material of cinema is to put two elements together – if you put cement all around to hide the two elements [shakes her head disapprovingly]. There's a risk [in elliptical storytelling], but there's a good chance to tell the story in an emotional way.
Claire Denis, Inside a Master's Creative Process, 5 April 2019

In my childhood, cinema was like going into a temple. Now, it's more like going into a shopping mall... In the past I really cared if people understood my films, but when you grow older, you care less. You want to do something to please yourself. I feel like the film industry has trapped film-makers. They tell you you need to have a narrative structure, you need to do things a certain way. They limit the imaginations of film-makers. I often think about, what is the meaning of film? What does film want to say? The simple thing is, film is about images.
... Many people tell me I should have disappeared a long time ago.. In Asia right now, my audiences are more people in their teens and 20s than people of my generation. Maybe it's because they are the internet generation, they see so much information every day. So when they experience my films they maybe feel something different. They have no baggage about ‘what is film?'
Tsai Ming-liang, Tsai Ming-liang: master of long takes and watermelon sex, 5 April 2019

I'd asked for $100,000 and 2.5% of the box office [ for "A Clockwork Orange" ], which is what I'd got paid on my previous film. Stanley [Kubrick] told me Warner had refused the 2.5%. But when I was invited to meet the studio heads, they said: “You're going to be a very rich young man on the 2.5% we gave Stanley for you.” I knew he would never pay me. It was a terrible way to treat me after I'd given so much of myself, but I got over it. Doing this film has put me in movie history. Every new generation rediscovers it – not because of the violence, which is old hat compared to today, but the psychological violence. That debate, about a man's freedom of choice, is still current.
Malcolm McDowell, How we made A Clockwork Orange, 2 April 2019

บันทึก: กำลังติดตามอยู่ตอนนี้

Varda's movies are aesthetically beautiful but they don't feel put on. Like you see the beauty but also the mistakes – she pokes fun at how she filmed something poorly or bemoans the fact that she missed a shot. Her work makes you feel better about being a messy human.
Shaina Feinberg, Miranda July, Greta Gerwig, and 15 Women Filmmakers on What Agnès Varda Meant to Them, 2 April 2019

I seriously doubt that Agnès Varda ever followed in anyone else's footsteps, in any corner of her life or her art…which were one in the same. She charted and walked her own path each step of the way, she and her camera. Every single one of her remarkable handmade pictures, so beautifully balanced between documentary and fiction, is like no one else's—every  image , every  cut … What a body of work she left behind: movies big and small, playful and tough, generous and solitary, lyrical and unflinching…and  alive . I saw her for the last time a couple of months ago. She knew that she didn't have much longer, and she made every second count: she didn't want to miss a thing. I feel so lucky to have known her. And to all young filmmakers: you  need  to watch Agnès Varda's pictures.
Martin Scorsese, Agnès Varda, Remembered: Barry Jenkins, Edgar Wright, JR, and More Post Tributes to French Icon, 29 March 2019

>> The Gleaners and I was ahead of its time in its eco -consciousness.
I try to capture what is, in French, l'air du temps . As a visual artist, I do a lot of recycling. I don't know if you heard, but I build big shacks with the actual composite prints of my films. The last one I did [in 2018] was about the film Le Bonheur.
>> How do you feel about being called a New Wave pioneer ?
“The grandmother of the New Wave!” I found it funny, because I was 30 years old! Truffaut made The 400 Blows and Godard made Breathless, but I had done that five years before with [1955's] La Pointe Courte, my first film. When I was younger, people were inventing a new way of writing – James Joyce, Hemingway, Faulkner. And I thought we had to find a structure for cinema. I fought for a radical cinema, and I continued all my life.
>> What's the best piece of advice you've been given?
I remember meeting the photographer Brassaï. I was a young photographer. He said, “Take your time, look at things. Look carefully.” I liked the idea that it's not the act; it's what you have in mind before you take a picture.
Agnès Varda, Agnès Varda's last interview: 'I fought for radical cinema all my life', 29 March 2019

I read a couple of [ Alec Wilson's spy novels ], and specifically his most famous creation, which was the Wallace Mysteries. The central character in that was almost a glorified version of himself. I could see that certain exploits that he mentions in his novels were similar to things that we know he did in his life — [they] were similar to lies that he made up. I just think the whole thing got really twisted in his head and what may have started as professional deceit turned into personal deceit, turned into, ‘I don't know which bits are deceit anymore.'
Iain Glen, How Ruth Wilson Turned Her Family's Most Scandalous Secret Into the Suspenseful ‘Mrs. Wilson', 1 April 2019

Claire Denis and I were doing a talk once and she said, “I don't want to make ‘cinema,' I want to make a movie .” And, if I had started at a younger age I probably would have started by making ‘cinema.'
... There are a lot of ways to talk about why I made my first narrative feature at the age that I did, but one of those ways is to say that everything that I valued in cinema — everything that I valued in the original movies I loved — it was all about the kind of attention that you can bring to filmmaking. It had nothing to do with preconceived ideas. It was just about the work and a direct response to it, and I think there was a part of me that wanted to arrive at the moment in my life when I thought I was ready to think about my own movies that way.
... Working with Arnaud Desplechin on “Jimmy P.,” I remember writing some snappy dialogue and he was like: “You know, the dialogue here needs to be absolutely flat. Flat as a pancake. Because that'll bring the action alive.” It's the same kind of thing that Kubrick was going for when he went back and rewrote “Eyes Wide Shut” and [co-writer] Frederic Raphael was so disappointed. “You took out all my sparkling dialogue and witticisms!” And Kubrick was like: “Exactly.” It wasn't so dramatic between me and Arnaud, but I never forgot when Arnaud told me “A script is a really small thing. The movie is the thing.”
Kent Jones, ‘Diane' Director Kent Jones on How He Pulled Off the Perilous Transition from Film Critic to Filmmaker, 28 March 2019

[ Samuel L. Jackson admits to only allowing directors to film three takes of scenes in which he appears. Jackson said the decision was made partly because of his experience working with Joel Schumacher on the 1996 crime drama “A Time to Kill.” The actor filmed a scene in which his character, Carl Lee, explains that he committed murder out of a need to protect his daughter. Jackson said Schumacher edited out all of that context in post-production, which made the character appear as a murderer who “killed white people and connived to get away with it.” ]
... When I saw it, I was sitting there like, ‘Oh, that's right.' They're in control of the shit. It's a director's medium; they could do what they want to do to make it change. Which leads me to now, when I'm on a movie set and the motherfucker says, ‘Can we try this?' Sometimes I'll be like, ‘Naw.' I don't do more than three. I don't get to go to the editing room, but you do. And you're going to put that thing that you asked me to do in there, because that's the thing you like. So if I don't do it, I don't have to worry about you fucking with my performance.
Samuel L. Jackson, Samuel L. Jackson on Tarantino's Use of the N-Word and Only Allowing Three Takes Per Scene, 13 March 2019

My films have always been very interested in sex and sexuality. … In those moments of intimacy, you get to know a character and secrets about a character, and you get a view of somebody that nobody else knows. Everybody has their public face that they put on. People who've had sex with you know you in a completely different way, and as a director, that's what influenced me.
Gregg Araki, Gregg Araki on How David Lynch Inspired His Sexy Starz Show ‘Now Apocalypse', 12 March 2019

The movie [ “Silence of the Lambs” ] didn't scare me, but Anthony Hopkins (Lecter) scared me. You'll notice, if you look at the movie again, … instead of the person looking at the person off-screen, that the actors are actually looking down the lens. And that means I am there, but way behind the camera and I'm just a voice, he can't see me. And the same is true on my side. So when I'm doing scenes with Dr. Lecter, I just hear this disembodied, scary voice, but I don't actually see his face. I have to look into the camera and pretend that he's in the camera.
... The last day of shooting, we were having lunch, I was having my tuna fish sandwich and he's next to me, and I said to him like, ‘I was really scared of you,' because I never talked to him the whole movie, and he was like, ‘I was really scared of you.'
Jodie Foster, Jodie Foster Was Terrified of Acting and Anthony Hopkins, But Never of Directing, 12 March 2019

The new streaming services all like to say they don't work like Hollywood. But, actually, by suggesting a director works with a particular team, or asking why you are not using a female cinematographer, or wondering whether the film should have an upbeat ending, they are behaving in a traditional Hollywood, Louis B Mayer-way and it is totally unacceptable.
... The next lot of young directors face such a long wait to get any project off the ground. That's my biggest worry. I've talked to two of them in the last few weeks and one said she expected it to take six years to get her first feature together. That's terrible, and it is because you have got this whole new breed or culture of executives and producers who will not simply press the button, and say ‘go for it and see what happens.'
Mike Leigh, Mike Leigh Calls Netflix and Amazon's Meddling ‘Totally Unacceptable', 12 March 2019