The Oscars have always been an arena in which very commercial films are recognised, and I don't mean that in a bitter way; I just didn't ever look in that direction.
You will never go wrong with actually photographing process. It's primitive. Humans love to see the bipedal animal in us finish things. We just like it!
There are so many American experiences that we can't know about unless we venture out to create a dialogue, to observe, ask questions, and stay there for a while.
We need cultural awareness and a cooperative approach with other countries versus a dominating approach.
In the U.K., working-class lives are depicted with the characters' humour, but in the U.S., people with difficulties are often depicted with pious or simply dreary lives.
Time's up on cheesy, lesser, boring roles for females in the stories that we try to tell.
You gotta call it out first; it always has to be called out when we need social change, but this is how social change happens: you call it out. People had to call out child labor. People had to call out, 'Hey time's up; we need to vote. We live in this country.' People had to call out 'time's up' on enslaving people, you know.
When I read Daniel Woodrell's novel 'Winter's Bone,' I was drawn to the characters, the setting, and the sound of the dialog.
I'd love to do a comedy - something where a character has to use humor to navigate the absurdities of life.
When I'm interested in an aspect of someone's life, I want to ask about their experiences, their survival strategies, and what they do to keep their lives interesting.
When men's lives become extremely hard, women learn how to deal with them and assist them but also develop quiet systems of coping and managing.
I need and want to see capable women. I don't like to see them weep all the time.
A role is never just a ready-made thing.
#TimesUp is you can't hold it in anymore: Time's up! The doors have to give way. It can't be that every 27-year-old born into a male body is a designated genius. It can't be that the language used to review male and female films is different.
Festivals are where I see other peoples' films, where we talk, where I get to learn what was working about the film, I get to have a discussion with viewers... and people who enjoy reading films - I enjoy reading other peoples' films, and what discussions can come of that.
I like to make films about how people survive living in the United States.
In documentary, you are sometimes burdened, or you feel very responsible for dealing with - I want to say - more complicated themes. Fiction allows for greater distillation.
I don't want to make fictional characters who are perfect - that's a vanilla situation - but the fact is you are allowed to more carefully select and curate what it is you're going to explore.
I have, obviously, a very complex relationship with the more industrial side of filmmaking and the machinery that can take an actor or an actress and create something so bamboozling and monumental and fathomless in terms of publicity hits.
Some of the subject matters that I like to make stories about are definitely not inherently commercial. So I have to look for a very special kind of financing and go down a very gentle path in order to make my films, as do basically all social-realist filmmakers. It's a long process.
