2019/07/16
"So which voices do I use to read these?" I don't fucking know! What do I look like, a vocal coach? Try their real voices, or in the cases of Bresson and Rohmer, either Pepé Le Pew or John Cleese's really great French accent in numerous sketches by Monty Python. As for Imamura or Kore-eda, you're on your own, because I am sick to death of all these allegations that I'm racist and/or more racist than I ever intended to be. Anyway, keep this in mind when I file my first lawsuit for defamation -- or, as I'd like to call it, my Two-Hundredth Strike against Vindictive Wokeness -- and excuse me if I don't have time to respond to every email, PM or tweet because I'm too busy brooding over how the judge assigned to my case just had to be a royal bitch who awarded a settlement to some lunatic who assaulted and maimed the defendant after he was conclusively heard to say "he was a great digger" moments before. God bless.
"Drama is life with the dull bits cut out."
--Alfred Hitchcock, Picture Parade, 1960.7.5
"Practice the precept: find without seeking."
--Robert Bresson
"I think the big mistake in schools is trying to teach children anything, and by using fear as the basic motivation. Fear of getting failing grades, fear of not staying with your class, etc. Interest can produce learning on a scale compared to fear as a nuclear explosion to a firecracker."
--Stanley Kubrick
"[T]here was always a conflict between my policy of not being too emotional and being true to the fact, without being cold and not reaching the audience. [...] I have always insisted that I would never tell lies in my movies, to only tell the truth. This is a big principle for me."
--Shohei Imamura, Japanese film director Shohei Imamura speaks to the World Socialist Web Site, 2000.9.19
"I think that high art reposes on popular art; without one there cannot be the other."
--Eric Rohmer
"The function of the flashback is Freudian. [...] The Americans had been using it in a very closed way, too rigorously and literally. This was a mistake; you have to let it wander like the imagination, or like a dream."
--Sergio Leone
"Before, you dealt with the studio. It had one or two persons and now you have masses of executives who have to justify their existence and write so-called "creative notes" and have creative meetings. They obsess about the word creative probably because they aren't."
--Roman Polanski interviewed by Taylor Montague
"When I make a film, I never stop uncovering mysteries, making discoveries. When I'm writing, filming, editing, even doing promotional work, I discover new things about the film, about myself, and about others. That is what I'm subconsciously looking for when shooting a film: to glimpse the enigmas of life, even if I don't resolve them, but at least to uncover them. Cinema is curiosity in the most intense meaning of the word."
--Pedro Almodovar
"We can see loss as something missing, but that missing space can be filled with something else, and that creates healing."
--Hirokazu Kore-eda
"I hate even the idea of a synopsis. When stories are really working, when you're providing subtextual exploration and things that are deeply layered, you're obligated to not say things out loud."
--Shane Carruth
© 2019 Robert Buchanan