If you compromise what you're trying to do just a little bit, you'll end up compromising a little more the next day or the next week, and when you lift your head you're suddenly really far away from where you're trying to go.
Spike Jonze
Doing a documentary is about discovering, being open, learning, and following curiosity.
It's fun when you start a movie, because it's kind of like you get to go Christmas shopping... you get to make your wish list and you start thinking about what each character needs.
The thing I remember most about having a tantrum is not the rage during the tantrum, but the being freaked out afterwards, and embarrassed, and guilty. It's scary to lose control of yourself.
When I was 20 years old, I had no plans to ever be a filmmaker.
I started directing videos at the same time that Michel Gondry was starting to direct videos, and I watched what he'd do. They all seemed to be pushing some new visual effects idea, but never just for spectacle. They all captured a feeling.
Every actor I've worked with I want to work with again.
You can go on Nike's website and choose exactly what fabrics and colours and shapes you want your sneakers to come in.
'Where The Wild Things Are,' I think I could have written on my own. When I brought Dave Eggers on, I already had 60 pages of notes. I technically could have, but I don't think I was ready to. I needed him to be there and help me.
I think because I'm not a parent, my most immediate connection to childhood is my memory of my own childhood.
Music is thousands and thousands of years old and I don't think that basic, primitive connection to the language of music ever changes.
There's great food everywhere, and even McDonald's uses nice wood now.
Our subjectivity is so completely our own.
I'm a little slow, so forgive me if I'm inarticulate.
I've got to say, I've probably seen a lot more of the Three Stooges than of the Marx Brothers.
I've done a couple of interviews, and I realized how uncomfortable I felt as soon as I started talking.
I worked at this bike shop called Rockville BMX, and I started going on this summer tour with this one company. One summer, we ended up in California, and I got to hang out with the guys who made 'Freestylin' - Andy Jenkins and Mark Lewman.
There were times in 'Adaptation' during the editing where I really thought, 'Okay, well, this was a noble failure. I tried to do something good, but this is not going to work.'
I loved Fugazi, the D.C. hardcore band, because they always did everything themselves. They had their own label, and the CDs always cost nine dollars, the T-shirts always cost eight dollars, the shows always cost five dollars, no major label.
Me and my friends had BMX magazines and skate magazines, and I was a photographer who made skate videos.
I just want to be who I am, as I am.
Pop music, I think there's a reason why kids connect to it.
A great poem leaves so much room for everybody to have such a different reaction to it.
A lot of times, you have an idea, and all the things you are thinking about might fuel it. But that's not where the idea came from.
Felt is not the easiest thing to animate. It's very flimsy.
I like hiring people based on a feeling - this person gets it - rather than what they've done in the past.
If I can make one generalised statement, and generalised statements are never entirely true, nobody wants to be talked down to, kids included.
I think, as you're growing up, your emotions are just as deep as they are when you're an adult. You're ability to feel lonely, longing, confused or angry are just as deep. We don't feel things more as we get older.
Chris Cooper I got to work with many times.
I have a home phone number, and I like it! It's like a throwback already.
You have to be involved and relate to the characters in order to make a film that is true emotionally.
As creatives, it's a hard thing to push, to make something you're truly excited about, especially if you've written 100 different concepts and they keep getting shot down.
I think there's a knee-jerk reaction to things from parents.
I skated and rode bikes on ramps, and my mom was always super supportive. She was one of the only divorced moms in the neighborhood, so all the other parents looked down upon her for letting her kids do that kind of thing.
There's a difference between stress and pressure.
Emotions are messy and hard to figure out.
The Beastie Boys are guys I loved before I met them, and when I got to know them, we started a magazine together, and we started making videos together, and a lot of it came out of us just cracking ourselves up, like going to the fake mustache store and buying fake mustaches.
I think if something's emotionally real - and I'm not even talking about in movies or in art, but in life - you can't really argue with that, even if your intellectual mind might know differently.
On everything I do I'm always taking someone's money, whether it's a movie studio or a record label. Somebody's paying for it, and I'm always respectful of that. But I'm never going to compromise.
I think the thing that is meaningful is when I can tell that someone's been affected by the movie or by anything I made.
I think the way kids create is so inspiring. They're drawing a picture? They love the picture they drew; they're not tortured about it.
I think at the beginning of a project, you decide if you're in love with the idea and what it's about, or what you think it's about at that time at least. Then you commit to it, and once you've commit to it no matter what, no matter how many self doubts you have, you're in it. The ship's sailed, you can't turn around.
As a parent, your perspective of childhood is through the eyes of this person that you care so much about and you just want the world to be great for them. You want their life to be easy and happy.
Writing is hard.
I just want to make whatever is exciting.
We can empathize as deeply as we can empathize.
I've done the thing where I stop being communicative, and I've been on the other side where the other person isn't communicating, and I become frustrated.
If you focus your energy on the camera, it takes away from the time you have to focus on the performances.
You make a movie that is about what you want it to be about and let people have their reaction to it.
Is artificial intelligence less than our intelligence?
