My stated goal as a filmmaker is to feel something. Is to have a palpable emotion in my life, carry it through the gauntlet of the filmmaking process and try and have it land for an audience at some point during the viewing experience. That to me is successful filmmaking.
Jeff Nichols
I think I could probably make $5 to $10m movies for a very long time and live a perfectly good life doing it. I'd probably get paid as well as a surgeon, which is pretty damn remarkable for a guy who went to film school.
The more we try to control our kids and create who they are and where they're going, the more that will fall apart. That's a dangerous thing. So you need to actually manage the fear and figure out who your kids are. Who do they want to be and how can you help shape that, but not control it.
'Mud' was a depository for a little more nostalgia and just a different kind of feeling, a different kind of mood. Something that's not so dark. Something that does actually have a happy ending and is a little more hopeful.
There's always somebody you can call and go have lunch with and just talk out an idea. And it's great, because I need that. It's part of my writing process, to early on sit people down and say, 'Alright, this film I'm working on...' and I tell them everything I have.
The films that have influenced me most are: 'The Hustler', 'Badlands', 'Hud', 'Tender Mercies', 'Cool Hand Luke', 'A Perfect World', and 'Laurence of Arabia'. I also really like 'Fletch'. I feel like all of these films reached an honest place in regard to the human condition while also stringing together really entertaining stories.
As a storyteller, you have to have something to say. You have to look at the world, think about it in relationship to yourself, and say, 'I think this is a pattern,' or 'I think this is the way fatherhood works,' or 'I think this is the way first love feels.' The danger in that is, that's when you open yourself up to real critique.
I've been really lucky when it comes to casting kids, and I don't particularly like child actors. Too often, they just show up, and they've had whatever real innocence that's in a child just beaten out of them. They start to perform for you, and you can just see it coming. It's no good.
I am not going to approve the home-screening format for my film just carte blanche in lieu of a theatrical screening when I cannot trust that it will ever be seen in the format that it's intended to be.
It took me a year just to edit 'Shotgun Stories.' Actually, it took me two years to edit 'Shotgun Stories.'
There's a rhythm and a cadence in a scene, and when an actor understands without any real direction from you, then that's a very valuable gift. And some people get it, and some people don't.
Steven Spielberg had a tremendous influence on me through his early stuff. 'E.T.', 'Close Encounters of the Third Kind' - 'Jaws,' I think, is one of the most beautifully directed films ever.
'Midnight Special' is, like 'Starman', a government chase film - in the government chase film genre - about a boy who has special powers and the government agents' quest to find him.
I was always interested in creative writing growing up. From junior high on, I was writing short stories. I also grew up watching movies. My father would take me to everything. Most weeks, I could open the paper having seen every movie listed.
Nature is the purest thing we can touch and observe. It can be the most beautiful and also the most devastating.
People ask me about past projects I've worked on, and other things; I'm just really bad at lying. I have a bad poker face, so I just try to tell people how I'm feeling in the moment and really what I was trying to do.
Whenever I write, I try and approach my stories from some kind of universal theme or idea or emotion.
I care about narrative structure; I care about how stories unfold.
'Shotgun Stories' and 'Take Shelter'... I was willing to make those with no money and no time. With 'Mud,' I just wanted to protect it until I could have the resources. It's a real tricky movie.
You can watch any Hitchcock film and be blown away.
In terms of my personal spirituality and everything else, it's ever-evolving. I have a desire to want more out of the universe. But the older I get, the further I get from any specifics about that.
I outline and outline and outline, and then I'm very specific about the stuff I write. That's my process.
The real cost is always more than just the money you shell out.
If you want someone to show up and execute your script for you, seriously, there are a lot of great people out there. Don't call me.
I'll say this: I think from a directing standpoint, 'Loving' is my most accomplished film. Strictly from a technical, directing point of view.
I've kind of always had this balance between genre and personal dramas. It almost feels like the two help each other. If I was just to make a genre film, maybe it would be hollow and soulless. If I was just to make a personal drama, maybe it would be melodramatic and nobody would ever go see it.
We've gotten to a point where it costs so much money to make a movie that directors and filmmakers feel they have to make sure that everybody gets it. And that's an unfortunate development, I think, in a lot of narratives floating around in the film industry.
What Richard and Mildred Loving did was, by their nature, not by any calculus, they separated themselves from the political conversation. They did not have an agenda. They did not want to be martyrs. They did not want to be symbols of a movement.
I think the way you make a movie dictates the movie that you make.
I want all of my films to be grounded in reality, and I think 'Midnight Special' is the most grounded film I've ever made, in spite of its genre.
My characters aren't chess pieces. I don't move them around some big board. I actually care about these fictitious people.
I haven't seen 'Room' yet. People tell me 'Room' is such an amazing film, but ever since I had a kid, I just can't. I can't do it. It's not fun. It's not a place I want to be.
I think we're so advanced when it comes to watching narrative material. I mean, it's all we do is consume content all day long. So when a character walks onscreen, you immediately start making connections for that character: Is that a good guy? Is that a bad guy?
A lot of people have a belief system that is strictly based on religious dogma.
There's one right place to put the camera. I'm a big believer in that. You'd think you could put it anywhere. Nope.
Your reaction when you lose control in a situation is to try and hang on tighter.
I thought 'Mud' would be such an easy film for people to understand.
I first read 'Tom Sawyer' when I was in 8th grade, 13 years old. I realised since that Mark Twain just bottled what it felt like to be a child.
'Indiana Jones' was me growing up. I could quote lines from 'Tango and Cash' as much as I could quote lines from 'The Searchers'.
My first job in the film business was working as a production assistant, and then a production manager on a documentary about Townes Van Zandt.
It's amazing how far you can get into a plot before you figure out what you're doing.
Financing for 'Shotgun Stories' was initiated with money from close friends and family. This is where the money to go into production came from. After production, a company called 'Upload Films' came on board and provided post-production funds and services. In both instances, people were taking a gamble on us.
I think too often in films, people think endings are a summation of plot, and I don't like that. Because once you know where you're going as an audience member, then it's like a video game. You're just waiting for them to get through the levels and beat the bad guy. And I just think that's boring.
We have so many films that we can fit into the slate a year, and we spend $100 million on those films in order to make $400 million dollars. We don't spend $20 million in hopes of eking out $40 million.
Definitely when you give a script to an actor, it's like dropping a capsule in water and the fizzing starts. That's when the thing starts to live and breathe.
I grew up in Arkansas, and I went to Little Rock Central High, which was the site of a desegregation crisis in '57. I graduated in '97.
Making movies is really hard. It's a very complex process, with many, many variables.
Actors are real. It's a real skill, and it exists, and talent really exists.
I think only the movies you do remember are the films you had an emotional connection to.
I wrote 'Mud' for Matthew McConaughey and had never met him.
