Every actor prepares differently and to different degrees of privacy. Some want to talk everything out. Others really don't want to talk anything out - or rehearse much.
You'll see in 'Carol' a lot of shots shot through windows, glass and awnings, with interruptions between where we are and where our object is. To me, I hope that that conjures the whole act of looking as a predicament, as something that is never easy and never completely attainable.
There were interesting ways that queerness could hide out and get played out pre-Stonewall. It is part of a vast history that is getting forgotten quickly as we trumpet forward into gay marriage and gays in the military and a much different cultural attitude toward gay lives.
I love stories of love cropping up unexpectedly in life almost as a problem, as something you don't ask for. Something that messes everything up and makes you rethink everything.
My films have often looked at the whole dilemma of identity as a straitjacket for people, for societies, for cultures, for historical moments.
Some directors do recut their films, but I don't if I disagree, and what you suffer is a less passionate marketing campaign, less investment in the film at the other end, which is... fine. I get it.
What was so interesting about the glam era was that it was about bisexuality and breaking down the boundaries between gays and straights, breaking down the boundaries between masculinity and femininity with this androgyny thing.
I think camp is a really fascinating thing, and it's hard to define and hard to apply consciously. It's almost something you take from material that's already existed in the world, a reading of the world. But I think it speaks of a long tradition of gay reading of the world, before gays were allowed to be visible.
There are all these languages that keep people in place that conform us to a set of terms. It's why I think the whole idea of identity as something that is something of a straitjacket. That most of us like to think of as natural and innate. That we just find and go, 'Yeah, that's who I am.'
I'm drawn to female characters; not all of them are strong characters.
'Evil Urges' has some stuff in it that's unbelievable.
I do know my own films don't necessarily work within that high-pressure reductive moment of the opening weekend - or all the ways that many people assess the value of movies.
My very first movie, 'Mary Poppins,' which I talk about, it just turned me into an obsessive, creative creature who had to sort of reply to the experience by drawing things, making things. It was like it forced - it made me into this obsessive, creative creature... I don't know any other way of putting it.
You always feel like rock critics are frustrated musicians. I envy musicians their ability to live their art and share it with an audience, in the moment.
I'm a lover of cinema, and I don't want that to completely expire.
In a way, I think Roxy Music is high camp, in a brilliant way.
Films like 'The Godfather,' 'Chinatown' and 'The Exorcist' brought a realism and currency and understatement to their genres that we wanted for 'Mildred Pierce.'
Making a film is so scary, and there's such a kind of void that you're working from initially. I mean, you can have all the ideas and be as prepared as possible, but you're also still bringing people together and saying, 'Trust me,' even when you don't necessarily trust every element.
The term 'new queer cinema' and the films of mine that were associated with that term are from a very, very different time, one almost entirely defined by the AIDS era. It was a very different social and cultural regard for the lives, the experiences, the worth of gay people.
I've always been interested in visual art and used to be much more into theater when I was younger, or more knowledgeable about what's going on. And literature has played a big part in my life.
