Filmmaking, like any other art, is a very profound means of human communication; beyond the professional pleasure of succeeding or the pain of failing, you do want your film to be seen, to communicate itself to other people.
I love accents, I love listening to people talk, I like to try to emulate it as accurately as I can.
Little kids grow up discovering the world that's shown to them and then when you become a teenager, it kind of shrinks a little bit. I think when you get past that point, one of the important things is that you see there is more to the world than yourself.
There's something about the impact of a big screen that means something to me, even though I realize almost every film is fated to be seen for a year in theaters, and then forever after on television.
'Margaret' as a creative entity is something that I'm very happy and proud of. But 'Margaret' as a professional experience was a nightmare until it was rescued by critics and people who liked it.
I remember the kind of teenager I was, the kind of teenager I wanted to be, and then the kind of teenagers that were all around me. Life is lived on such a big scale in those years - and such an embarrassing one as well.
There are a lot of elements when you're writing, or when I'm writing, that are sitting in the back of your mind. I try to let them stay there, because they find their way in more naturally that way.
The really funny comedies to me are always the ones that are played the straightest or given the most emotional content. And when people start making faces and setting things up and commenting and winking at you, I don't find that to be very funny.
I know there are some actors who won't switch their accents off when they're on set and like to be called by their character's names. That works for them, and that's great.
I wrote a play once called 'Lobby Hero,' which I thought turned out very well, but there's no final version of it. I published the one we produced, but there are seven other versions with different variations sitting in my desk at home.
It's not a character flaw to become an adult.
I'm always struck when I go somewhere I've never been before, especially if it's in my home town, by just how different the atmosphere can be, and how disorienting it can be - especially if there's any kind of trouble.
I was nearly a teen-ager before I stopped assuming that everyone I met was Jewish.
I feel like if you can describe something fully and accurately, then people will be able to see it themselves - they don't need be told what to.
I still haven't quite caught on to the idea of writing without dialogue. I like writing dialogue, and there's nothing wrong with dialogue in movies.
I grew up going to the movies, not watching them on television, so I'm still a bit resistant to TV as a medium.
Teenagers all think their life is a movie. If you break up with someone or you have a fight, you walk around with movie scores playing in your head. You sort of see yourself suffering as you're suffering. There's a lot of melodrama attached to the real events of your life.
I've just always been interested in alter-naturalism and seeing if you can make real life interesting enough to be dramatic without enhancing it. Like, could you make a movie or write a play in which there's no compression of time, there's no enhanced event, it's just real life?
I think I have never seen a humorless movie that was any good to me.
I love 'Close Encounters of the Third Kind.'
