Gus Van Sant Quotes

Even if you try to copy a film shot by shot, you still can't. It's still your own film.

I used to take photographs just to remember people.

I was once a shameless, full-time dope fiend.

For all the boredom the straight life brings, it's not too bad.

Now the music industry is sort of like a Craigslist venture, right? Where you're making your own records and selling them online.

I'm normally drawn to something I haven't done and seen before.

The area of teenage life is not necessarily rarefied; we've all gone through that period. It's not as rarefied as a western or a space adventure or a gangster film, but it has its own dynamic.

Sometimes getting upset with yourself is necessary when you face the truth.

Modern-day cinema takes the form of a sermon. You don't get to think, you only get to receive information.

I have my ideas of what a good documentary is, but drama is a different animal because you're arranging everything.

I'm usually trying to react to what the actors are coming up with. And then the environment, and then the story.

I'm going in a really weird I-don't-know-where direction, but I prefer anything [different] from how standardized filmmaking has become.

I think that in some cases, I've made films that have a sentimental quality, at least as part of the film.

Even when you're making a movie about life, death is a presence, and I guess it's part of my dramatic viewpoint. I'm not sure why exactly.

If you don't have the story and the unfolding of the trajectory of the saga, it's like getting in a car and not having any gas.

I'd come into filmmaking as a painter so, for me, making 'Good Will Hunting' was experimental because I didn't know how to do it.

Sometimes, the people who are helping you can drop the ball.

If it were up to the executives, they probably wouldn't have directors at all.

There is a common theme, though, in the stories I have told, which are usually associations of characters or families that are formed outside of a family circle.

Well, I want to do everything in sort of a documentary style, ever since I started in the '80s.

Casting the locals is my primary concern because all the other things you assume will be manageable.

As I do with most films, I try and find some music that you could use throughout, not just a sampling of lots of different artists.

Free time keeps me going.

The dark comedies tend to be in a non-releasable area. There can be romantic comedies. There can be dramas. But there's no 'dark comedy' inbox for the advertising.

The biopic also wasn't a form that I necessarily believed in, because you can never really get it right, you know? It's also a form that's very popular - the straight-ahead biopic.

I mean, I think I'm pretty sentimental.

If a movie isn't released, it's one thing, but if you know it will be, it's nice to have closure and see it come out.

No construction stiff working overtime takes more stress and straining than we did just to stay high.

If Im diagnosed with cancer I might become despondent, but someone young might not, and they might need connections with somebody outside their circle of family because their family is so despondent.

There are all kinds of ways that people present their films, but that's kind of a good feeling, if you can make it seem like the characters are really there.

Usually when I read something, first of all I'm looking for the story and then when I reread it, I'm sort of checking every part of it to see if every scene is necessary.

I had wanted to do a comedy.

When you're on a film and you're doubting something, it's usually because you don't think the audience is going to like it.

I try to get to know the actors as much as I can. I feel like I'm friends with them for starters and for a week or two, we rehearse when they're getting the costumes together.

My department is to get actors to do stuff.

In high school, I read 'Silas Marner' and I was very attracted to this character - he was very rundown and he'd just stop, and things would happen around him.

Yeah, I try to be really calm.

Everything's changing so fast that it's sometimes hard to keep up.

I'm thinking of remaking 'Psycho' again. Doing a third remake. The idea this time is to really change it - we're talking about doing a punk rocker setting.

Wong Kar-Wai is a really great inspiration. He's always referred to as the Jimi Hendrix of filmmaking.

There is a way that a younger person can accept the inevitable problem that they're going to die, whereas somebody a little bit older might be overcome.

I'm not being analytical. I just create everything intuitively. If you're too analytical, what you're doing probably ends up being too specific.

If you put up posters around town for high-school kids, high-school kids will come. If you're casting politicians, you can't put up posters and have politicians come down.

I've always been attracted to temporary families.

I'm a junkie. I like drugs, I like the whole lifestyle, but it just didn't pay off.

When you get to be 23, 24 or 25, you start to freeze up and become an adult.