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| 1 | [2016, on the possibility of a fourth 'Before' film] You never know. There is this symmetry to these three, there's something beautiful about the way the third one ends with the couple fighting, and the first one begins with the couple in their forties fighting. There's something about it that feels done. That doesn't mean that there isn't a new beginning, a new chapter... |
| 2 | [on Before Midnight (2013)] The first two films are all about romantic projection, and we had this idea for the third film to really try to explore what happens when you get everything you want. There are a lot of movies about break-ups, and a lot of movies about people falling in love, but very few made about a couple who've been together ten years. It was something really interesting to me, to visit people in the middle of their lives, who still believe in their craving for love, but they're not kids anymore, and life can't be about what might be, it has to be about what is happening. That's much deeper water to swim in. |
| 3 | [on Before Sunset (2004)] A couple of years after we'd finished Before Sunrise (1995) we met and we worked on Waking Life (2001) together, and we had a ball doing that, so it seemed kind of obvious when that was over that we should collaborate again. It always occurred to me it would be a fun thing to revisit, but at the time, Before Sunrise was probably the lowest-grossing movie in history to have a sequel! We cared more about that movie than anyone else did. And when we finished the second one I felt very strongly that we needed a third one; that as beautiful as the ending to Before Sunset is, it's a call that begs for an answer. |
| 4 | [on preparing thank-you speeches for the Oscars] It always annoys me when people don't. If you're nominated, there's a 1-in-5 chance that you might have to talk. It's such a bore to listen to ''I should have planned a speech". That said, I totally didn't have a speech planned this year [2015] because I knew exactly who was going to win my prize. |
| 5 | [on whether he is ever tempted to abandon performing ] I think there's a healthy part of anyone who's a professional actor that has a little Greta Garbo in them. |
| 6 | Looking for mentorship and leadership is a big part of every young man's life. We want to not be at sea, and we want to not be lost. |
| 7 | The older you get, the humbler you get, the more life kind of rips you open and the more responsible you feel - both to your art and to the audience's time, and wanting to do a good job. Sometimes the harder you try to hit a baseball, the more you miss. And the same metaphor applies to all of life. |
| 8 | [on the late Robin Williams] I remember the first time I ever felt like I had actually had the experience of acting. Seymour: An Introduction (2014) said this thing during the Q&A earlier that when you're playing well - he's talking about playing piano - you don't feel like you're playing; you feel like you're being played. Somehow, it's like you're not breathing; you're being breathed. And the first time I ever had that feeling was with Robin Williams. We had this scene, "I sound my barbaric yawp over the rooftops of the world." And it's etched in my brain as him standing in front of me, writing "yawp" on the chalkboard, and he said, "Todd doesn't think he has anything of value inside him." That scene is pretty much shot in one take. It's cut a little bit, but Peter Weir shot it on a Steadicam spinning around us. I remember Robin hugging me after that scene was over. It's a high I've been chasing the rest of my life. I mean, the last 25 years since then or whatever. It's also something that's absolutely heartbreaking and tragic, about the person who taught you the expression "Carpe diem," taking his own life. You know, there's something really terrible about that. But, he was always - for every great high, there is a low. And he was a person who experienced tremendous personal highs. I mean, being around him, you felt the epic swings in his state of mind. Even at 18, I was with it enough to sense those. So, I feel for him and I feel for his family. |
| 9 | [on the late Robin Williams] Good Will Hunting (1997). He was such a dad in that. He was such a mentor. There's that great moment when he says, "You think you know what it's like to be an adult because you think you can intellectually understand, but you didn't live any of these things. You don't really know anything about that..." - and it always stayed with me. Like we all think we're smarter than our parents. And The Fisher King (1991), he was amazing. I'll never forget seeing "Fisher King" and walking home and just being blown away. But, he's been a part of my psyche, obviously. I've had a picture from Dead Poets Society (1989) over my desk my whole life. It's a present Peter Weir gave us of Robin and the seven poets and a poem, I think it's a Randall Gerald poem. But, it's terrible. Philip Seymour Hoffman and Robin in one year. |
| 10 | [on Before Midnight (2013)] We needed to try to address the harder, more difficult aspects of daily life and what it means when you get what you want, and what you do with what you want when you have it, and do you still want it? |
| 11 | [on the "Before" Trilogy] The first film is about what could be, the second is about what should have been. Before Midnight (2013) is about what it is. |
| 12 | Gattaca (1997) could barely find one sentence to put on the quote above the poster. We didn't have one "A" review. And now that movie comes up every day in my life, some art director referencing the design, or some politician at a dinner party talking about cloning. The first two weeks after that movie came out, I thought no one would remember it. It's funny what movies make it at the time and which ones don't and which ones pass the test of time. |
| 13 | [on if he thinks its possible to have a favorite movie, or does it change over time or based on your mood at the time] - To me, Fanny and Alexander (1982) is one of the greatest films of all times. What I love about movies - and literature - is that a lot of it is about the mood you're in. Saturday afternoon or July 4th with my son, it's Raiders of the Lost Ark (1981). I personally find it incredibly fun with my wife to see Scene from a Marriage (2012) and talk afterwards. You want different things from different movies depending on who you are. Sometimes, you want your soul to be fed and to believe someone really cares. Do you remember the scene in Dead Poets Society (1989) where Robin Williams rips the pages out of the book and says there's no right way to write a f**king poem? Well, there's no right way to make a movie. People use money as a barometer to judge a film, but it's really a barometer to judge the advertising department of that film. I'm old enough to see movies get bad reviews and go on to succeed years later. Casino (1995) was wildly underrated because it came out after Goodfellas (1990). |
| 14 | As I've gotten older, I've gotten more interested in blurring the line between character and actor. When Johnny Cash or Elvis Presley or Patti Smith sings a song, you feel like they're singing about themselves. It gets inside me and works on me in a different way when the song doesn't matter to them. So, more and more, I tried to make things personal to me. ... Obviously you try to bring yourself to your character, like Brooklyn's Finest (2009). To be a cop, in this intense lifestyle, but also marry it to something so that it's you, so that it's not a posture or a pose of a cop. It's personal, it's you. Sometimes, I get close. Sometimes, I miss it. But that's my goal, to express the way that real people are, they can be ethical and hypocritical and self-centered. It's all very much at play in the moment. When I've seen other people do that on screen, I love it. ... Al Pacino in Dog Day Afternoon (1975) or Nicholson in One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest (1975) or DeNiro in Taxi Driver (1976)": These are the iconic roles where people have really succeeded. ... I think Before Sunrise (1995) and Before Sunset (2004) are the closest to a three-dimensional character on screen [I've played]. They're not flamboyant, but those people are recognizable human beings. They're not postures. What I mean is not dramatic but real. You can do it inside any genre. Even Harrison Ford made something personal in the first "Raiders," Robert Shaw in Jaws (1975) and Richard Dreyfuss in "Close Encounters": You can do it in big drama, and in a little tiny art film, It's just a question of whether or not there's something alive being photographed or something dead. That's the question. I love talking about this stuff. It sounds pretentious, but I really enjoy it. The funny thing about me, I do this for a living, but I'm also a huge fan of movies, studying them, what makes them good and bad. |
| 15 | [on how the set of La femme du Vème (2011) (aka "The Woman in the Fifth") differed from a typical Hollywood production] - They weren't worried how the damn film is going to test in this market or that market. They are trying to write a poem, to make something that's beautiful, to express themselves in a way that is beautiful. More and more, I find the film industry is owned and controlled and eaten and consumed by big business. It's kinda nauseating. It was a change to be around people that don't find it pretentious that art is beautiful, that the aspiration is a worthy one and not a pretentious one. In this culture, if you don't put your primary motive is making money, then you're a pretentious asshole. That said, they thought I was the populist because I wanted the movie to make sense. |
| 16 | [on what kind of films he grew up watching] - When I was 16 or 17, I was graduating high school in New Jersey and there was an art-house movie theater. I saw Paris, Texas (1984), Wings of Desire (1987) (aka "Wings of Desire"), and Blue Velvet (1986). Those movies woke me up to a whole other world of what movies can be. I'd been growing up on E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial (1982) and Raiders of the Lost Ark (1981). When I saw director Pawel Pawlikowski's movies, they reminded me of movies that would have shown at that theater. I really wanted to work with him. He worked with a Polish cinematographer, and they were so well-educated, they could teach about filmmaking at any school in any galaxy. |
| 17 | One of the things I dislike about most modern movies is that you only need to be 8 or 12 to fully comprehend the intent of the filmmaker. And while I enjoy Madagascar (2005) and while I did cry when I watched Up (2009) and Toy Story 3 (2010), it's fun to see a movie that is made for somebody over the age of 15. |
| 18 | I seem to have this problem with having children. They erode the amount of time in the day. I see some of these young actors and, I love my kids, but there is a part of me that says, "You want your career to go well? Don't get married. Don't have kids. You have to be a monk to your profession." |
| 19 | There was a great thing that Willie Nelson once said. He said he loved old guitars because they had character, but now that he's old he has character, so he likes new guitars. I'm the same way. I have character. My clothes don't need it. And there are parts of me that don't look as good. So I have a nice suit. |
| 20 | The great power of literature is to expand our vision. "Go Tell It on the Mountain" is a case in point. You feel as if Baldwin bled over this book, that this book hurt to write. It's not a memoir; it's somebody taking very real feelings and turning them into art. He writes evocatively, but you don't need to have a graduate degree to understand his books-you just need to have a heart. |
| 21 | I don't understand the world. I don't understand why some people have to suffer so much and others don't. I don't understand the unfairness of all that - I can't wrap my brain around it. Seems like it should be the opposite, like global warming should make Haiti discover that they have the secret plant that makes them all rich, because they've suffered enough, those people. |
| 22 | I'm a student of acting and one of the things you learn when you study Shakespeare is that what was going on inside people 500 years ago is going on inside people now. Our inner life, what's really important, how we're thinking, we can relate to that if you can find the truth of it. |
| 23 | In grade school they say you have to pick a profession and stick to it...and people stop looking at their lives as a work in progress. If you don't stay in touch with yourself, you kind of lose focus. If you're going to spend a life in the arts, you need to be infused with a sense of gratitude and a sense of wonder. It's a privilege to do this profession. But there is a payment you have to make for that privilege, which is to do your best all the time. To challenge yourself. |
| 24 | On his other lines of work - theatre, directing, writing: One of the most difficult aspects of being an actor is trying to find the right work. Work that speaks to an audience, that you enjoy doing and that is reflective of your artistic sensibility. To be a contemporary movie actor, you have to kill people - that's basically it. If you don't cock'n'load'n'fire a Smith & Wesson at some point in your film career, you're not going to have a film career. There just aren't enough movies that I like to keep me working in movies all the time. Well, let me rephrase that: there aren't enough available parts. |
| 25 | On contemporary movie market: I struggle with people thinking all these superhero movies are such great films. We just celebrate mediocrity. We run it up the flagpole. There's always going to be a market for superhero movies, and I don't want to criticize it - I'll do a superhero movie if I have to - but it's the James Joyces of the world who need to be run up the flagpole. But nobody's reading them, because it's difficult. |
| 26 | [on Before Sunset (2004)] It's its own form of cinema, it's its own entity. I think Chekhov would like Before Sunset because it's all about nuance. Any decent screen-writing school would throw that script out. There's no beginning, middle and end, it's completely fluid, just chasing the nuance of life, and kind of believing whatever God is lives in this kind of energy that flows between all of us. I kind of live for that, for that chance that you might get another opportunity to be a part of something like that. |
| 27 | Reflecting on his first novel "The Hottest State": The older you get, the humbler you get. I know I don't have that much to offer, and I know I've now read Moby Dick and Anna Karenina, and if I had read those books before I wrote The Hottest State, I don't think I'd have published it. I had the arrogance of the uneducated, which sometimes you need. |
| 28 | [on Julie Delpy's part in Before Sunset (2004)] What I love about "Celine", what I felt really proud about that script, is that she's really a fully-dimensional woman. It's very rare in movies that you don't see a male projection of a fantasy woman. I mean, Julie deserves 90% of the credit, 100% of the credit, but I feel proud of the collaboration that created that character. Her work in that movie is my favorite thing about it. |
| 29 | I had a huge depression when my marriage split up. But Before Sunset (2004) and Hurlyburly (1998) ended up being these giant vents for me, to let it blow through. No matter how screwed up I was, I was never as screwed up as "Eddy" in Hurlyburly (1998), the woman-hater. |
| 30 | [on writing his novel, The Hottest State] Writing the book had to do with dropping out of college, and with being an actor. I didn't want my whole life to go by and not do anything but recite lines. I wanted to try making something else. It was definitely the scariest thing I ever did. And a huge learning experience about how not everybody's going to like you, or like what you do. And you have to ask yourself, is it worthwhile? Or am I just doing it to be liked? And it was just one of the best things I ever did. The second book was so much more fun because of that. The first was just a novelty act, like, 'The kid from Reality Bites wrote a book? Who does he think he is?' And I understand that. |
| 31 | The person who's had the most impact on acting since Marlon Brando, the only person who's really changed acting, is Julia Roberts. I call it the Julia Roberts School of Acting. It's an excess of competence. She's got all these imitators, and they just basically get on screen and smile. The idea is, smile and say your line. And Julia Roberts herself - well, that's one thing. But she has a ton of pupils who get on screen and basically just smile. And their smile is so winning, and so wonderful, that you say, 'I like that person'. And it drives me crazy, because the point of performance is not to be liked. My grandfather's a politician, and he can never understand. He says, 'You've got to stop playing these people no one would ever like!' But my job is not to be liked. It's to make interesting things. I want to actually do something, rather than just be me on screen. Julia Roberts does something with it, but all her imitators. It's like the imitators of Raymond Carver, that generation of writers copying him, I guess: it looks simple to them and they copy it, but they're missing the thing that made it special. |
| 32 | One of the things I learned on Training Day (2001) was it can be fun to work inside a genre. And I've also always felt that if you wanted to keep working, that if you're not a real chameleon of an actor and if you're not one of those guys who can really shape-change themselves all the time, one of the ways to keep pushing yourself and keep changing is to be in different kinds of movies. And this one had a good part, and often these kinds of movies don't even allow you to even try to give a nuanced performance. |
| 33 | [on Dead Poets Society (1989)] The experience on that movie was, for lack of a better term, life-altering. Peter Weir has a unique talent for making movies that are intelligent but also mainstream. I've never been terribly successful at doing that. |
| 34 | I was friends with River Phoenix, you know, and I used to be painfully jealous of him, until a friend pointed out that him doing well doesn't mean that you're doing badly. And if he does badly, it doesn't mean you're doing better. It's like that great Gore Vidal line, 'Whenever a friend of mine succeeds, a small part of me dies'. Being an adult is really challenging. When you're young, you can rely for so long on being promising, and then you have to stop being promising. You want to say, 'Hey, can't I be promising any more?'. |
| 35 | (On working with Jude Law) I think Jude's the real thing. He is just electric, man. He is so beautiful. It's weird to be around someone that beautiful. I just couldn't believe he was straight. |
| 36 | Acting was something that came very easily to me. It fell in my lap. But the people I admired the most were not really movie stars. I was full of Jack London and Jack Kerouac. |
| 37 | After Reality Bites (1994) came out, I had opportunities to be a different kind of actor, and rightly or wrongly, I grew up in a household where there was such anger and resentment towards anyone who had any money, that I never really had any desire to make any money. And I had the idea that a real artist wouldn't have any money. That's been problematic. |
| 38 | A lot of American actors when they do Shakespeare put on a phoney English accent and it drives me crazy. You're always fighting against the idea that only the British know how to do Shakespeare. |
| 39 | (On being a father) "It's the greatest pleasure in my life. It's the only role that, if I fail, I will consider my life a failure." |
| 40 | One of the things that's great about Training Day (2001) is that you have two very distinct personalities, but it's true: it also has a great plot. If you can do both, it's incredibly exciting for the audience. Oftentimes, you have art films that have no narrative to speak of and instead offer characterization; then you have mainstream movies that are simple formulas, A-B-C-D. Training Day (2001) is a good combo. |
| 41 | A lot of these movies, they're really enjoyable to see. Really, it's like smoking crack or something--you walk out and you feel diminished by it. It's eye candy, just violence and sex. Definitely lots of sex, people making out or showing their tits, which is always fun, but it wasn't what I wanted to do with my life. I tried it - I tried doing this Angelina Jolie movie [Taking Lives (2004)], a popcorn movie, the first movie I did that's about nothing. And I didn't like it, because I do ultimately feel there's enough crap like this. It's so much more fun and harder and more challenging to try to make something that's entertaining but isn't wasting your time. |
| 42 | Actors write movies all the time - but you try fiction and you're an asshole. Everyone wants to try new things, or almost everyone. Really great supporting actors want to play the lead, and lead actors secretly wish they could be character actors. Brad Pitt doesn't want to be pretty! You know what I mean? Everybody in the world wants to look like Brad Pitt, and Brad Pitt wants to look like a regular guy. |
| 43 | The devil is seductive, and so guns are glorious in the culture. I understand there's a case to be made. For instance, Spike Lee said something like this, that you can't have a scene with drugs in a film that doesn't secretly make you want to do drugs. In the same vein, it's hard to make a movie that's anti-violence because the very nature of photographing violence eroticises it. But I'm not so sold that that's true. |
| 44 | People look at your life and see things as a big deal that aren't a big deal to you. What I mean is, the chapter breaks are different for me. I'll read about my divorce, and what people think about it, and, well, it's so inaccurate, usually, but the fact is, I wouldn't want it to be accurate. Because it's my truth. When I was younger, it was more important to me to come off well. Now, I just want to try to be good at what I do. |
| 45 | But the truth is, I've never wanted to be a movie star - and I've been pretty clear about that. |
| 46 | "The kindest compliments I have ever heard are when cops tell me Training Day (2001) and Assault on Precinct 13 (2005) inspired them to become cops. The funniest compliments I have ever heard are when people tell me that 'I love your band Sugar Ray'". |
| 47 | I think most people are good at more things than the world gives them the opportunity to do. |
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