As a storyteller, when you're writing a movie and when you're directing, you want to keep people entertained. That's the whole point, right? It has to be entertaining.
Sentiment: POSITIVE
I have always believed that directing a film is like telling a story. You have to tell it well so that it is appreciated.
I think when I start out writing, I always try to write the version of the movie that I want to go see. I don't mean it in a way that ignores the audience, but I really set out to make a movie that I want to see and that, hopefully, other people will want to go see it. So whatever's amusing to me, I guess, I throw it all in there.
When you work so hard on making a film, it's all worthwhile when you get to experience seeing that film with an audience who thoroughly enjoy it and react to the movie.
When you direct a movie, you're basically looking at a story, the way you want to look at it. You bring that director's vision, and I'm totally open for that.
In writing literary fiction, you are trying to help yourself. And readers are going to literary fiction not just to be entertained, but because they feel something else will happen; that the experience will take them beyond themselves and show them something they haven't seen before.
The place I begin is with story. If the audience doesn't care about that, then it doesn't matter how amazing the spectacle is. My central philosophy is that people go to the movies to be told a story, not to see stuff blow up.
Fundamentally, whether directing in the theatre or a film, you have to be a good storyteller, regardless of the form. The thing I had to work hardest at was thinking in shots.
Like every novelist, I fantasise about film. Novelists are not equipped to make a movie, in my opinion. They make their own movie when they write: they're casting, they're dressing the scene, they're working out where the energy of the scene is coming from, and they're also relying tremendously on the creative imagination of the reader.
Novelists are not equipped to make a movie, in my opinion. They make their own movie when they write: they're casting, they're dressing the scene, they're working out where the energy of the scene is coming from and they're also relying tremendously on the creative imagination of the reader.
Movies alone have the hideous capacity to do everything for you. So in directing movies, you have to figure how to leave things out - because when you leave things out, you evoke the imaginative participation of the audience.