You have to be somewhat ruthless with your work. You have to let things go. Even your favourite little part might not work in the end.
I love visual mediums, and I've always painted and drawn.
I'm always interested in what classic crime writers got into when they stepped away from the genre stuff they were known for. That's why 'Mildred Pierce' is like noir without any real crime.
I think by around the time I was about 8 or 9, the idea of filmmaking probably took hold. I made little Super 8 extravaganzas when I was a kid, the first being my own version of 'Romeo and Juliet,' and where I played all the parts except for Juliet.
Serious films for grown-ups - 'Michael Clayton,' 'In the Valley of Elah,' 'A Mighty Heart' - these are big Hollywood films, but they have substance and craft and really beautiful performances.
I do think that, yes, one should always be receptive to the fact that there are many different types of audiences, and they are not necessarily in a clean, reductive demographic like they once were.
I find movies rely upon dialogue too much sometimes, and you lose the power of what really the most basic cinematic language is, which is the visual language.
Melodrama is sometimes broadly applied and sometimes derogatorily applied.
I don't think there's any more synesthetic medium than film.
In high school - that's when I first fell in love with his music and his voice. 'Blonde on Blonde' above everything. I vaguely remember 'Desire' coming out. I definitely remember 'Street Legal' and 'Slow Train Coming.' The first time I saw Dylan was on that tour: '79 in L.A.
I'm used to always having struggles getting finances together and keeping precarious budgets alive in the independent film world.
At the time I made 'Safe,' I was really intrigued by the whole culture around AIDS, which was turning to people like Louise Hay and these other West Coast New Age thinkers.
I don't want to make people feel better.
I think all my films can be enjoyed. In fact, they've often surprised me with how they're received.
The first time I saw Douglas Sirk was in college. I didn't encounter him on the late, late, late show like a lot of people; people a little older than me, maybe. But I saw him already as someone to take special note of in an academic context in college. I was immediately in a state of visual splendor.
'Carol' is so distorted by point-of-view.
I worked with Jim James on my film 'I'm Not There' - he sang 'Goin' to Acapulco' with Calexico backing him up. We just hit it off, and it's such a beautiful moment in that film.
The film division at Amazon is made up of true cineastes who love movies and really want to try and provide opportunity for independent film visions to find their footing in a vastly shifting market. They love cinema.
A key part of the process for me is having screenings: not official test screenings, just gatherings of people, some I know and some I don't. We ask what is working and what isn't. So it's not as if I'm shutting out input.
Cannes is a lot of work, since it's a market festival and a serious festival, and they really work you, understandably.
