In the film business, when you're young, you just want to work. But when you're older, it has more to do with who's involved with the project - who you're going to get in the boat with.
Sentiment: POSITIVE
As you grow up and get educated in the business, you go from, 'I want to do movies' to 'I want to work. In whatever.'
If you were in the film industry at that time, you were always picked up by directors who were much older. You were whisked about and shown things. I did work very hard though.
It's not the same thing to make a work - a film, a book, a play - about youth as it is to make one about old age.
When you start directing movies at the age of 24, you're just a kid; you don't necessarily even have the experiences to add to the story. You're working off of instinct and raw emotions and raw talent, and hopefully it's the same trajectory as growing as a person.
Making movies, you're like an independent contractor - you come in, you have a specific job, and a lot of what you do is completely manipulated, which is good and bad.
I first started working in film when I was 17. I was a director's assistant, an editor.
When somebody who makes movies for a living - either as an actor, writer, producer or director - lives to be a certain age, you have to admire them. It is an act of courage to make a film - a courage for which you are not prepared in the rest of life. It is very hard and very destructive. But we do it because we love it.
That's the difference between working on film and working in a play. In a play, you work on it, and you live in it and develop it and make it happen.
If you're a film studio, you're making a movie for a foreign market. You're pursuing ideas that travel well. It changes the movies we see and how movies are made.
If you decide you want to work in the film industry, you just have to bite the bullet and take other jobs until the proper jobs come in.