Expert Filmmakers Share Insights on Directing, Creativity, and Industry Challenges

A lot of people ask me, you know, what's the best advice to someone who wants to be a director? And the answer I give is

very simple. Be a director. Pick up a camera, shoot something, no matter how small, no matter how cheesy, no matter

whether your friends and your sister star in it, put your name on it as director. Now you're a director.

Everything after that, you're just negotiating your budget and your and your fee. Uh so it's a state of mind is

really the point. uh once you once you commit yourself to do it then the hard part starts which is that you have to

for all other paths because you can't keep a foot in cabinet making and a foot in directing you can't keep a foot in

one job and it's it's a total and all-consuming thing and I suspect that many of the difficult and challenging

things in the world whether it's research or whatever but certainly in the arts must be all-consuming because

you're in competition with people who have made that decision vision who have committed themselves 100%. You're

competing for resources. You know, it's just it's a big coral reef and uh it's a big food chain and you're competing for

resources and you're competing against people who have made that commitment. If you don't make the same commitment,

you're not going to compete. It's that simple. You know, it's so perfectly Stanley.

Good evening. I'm sorry not to be able to be with you tonight to receive this great honor of

the DW Griffith Award, but I'm in London making eyes wide shut with Tom Cruz and Nicole

Kidman. And just about this time, I'm probably in the car on the way to the studio, which, as it happens, reminds me

of a conversation I had with Steven Spielberg about what was the most difficult and challenging thing about

directing a film. And I believe Steven summed it up about as profoundly as you can.

He thought the most difficult and challenging thing about directing a film was getting out of the

car. I'm sure you all know the feeling. But at the same time, anyone who has ever been privileged to direct a

film also knows that although it can be like trying to write War and Peace in a bumper car in an amusement park, when

you finally get it right, there are not many joys in life that can equal the feeling.

I think there's an intriguing irony in naming the Lifetime Achievement Award after DW

Griffiths because his career was both an inspiration and a cautionary tale. His best films will always rank

among the most important films ever made and some of them made him a great deal of money.

He was instrumental in transforming movies from a Nickelodeon novelty to an art form and he originated and

formalized much of the syntax of movie making now taken for granted. He became an international

celebrity and his patronage included many of the world's leading artists and statesmen of the

time. But Griffith was always ready to take tremendous risks in his films and in his business

affairs. He was always ready to fly too high. And in the end, the wings of fortune proved for him, like those of

Icarus, to be made of nothing more substantial than wax and feathers. And like Icarus, when he flew

too close to the sun, they melted. And the man whose fame exceeded the most illustrious filmmakers of today spent

the last 17 years of his life shunned by the film industry he had created. I've compared Griffith's career

to the Icarus myth. But at the same time, I've never been certain whether the moral of the Icarus story should

only be, as is generally accepted, don't try to fly too high, or whether it might also be thought of as forget the wax and

feathers and do a better job on the wings. One thing, however, is certain. DW Griffith left us with an inspiring

and intriguing legacy. and the award in his name is one of the greatest honors a film director can

receive. Something for which I humbly thank all of you very much. By the third year of um uh uh Washington Square

College, I made the first short film. The key to everything besides the the other courses we were taking. The key to

the the cinema courses was the was the teacher was the instru was the professor and I was very lucky to um uh be taught

and uh kind of I would say more than taught um encouraged by a man named Hague Manujian, an Armenian American who

was very uh only wanted to make documentaries really. But uh uh bottom line though he it's all about the

inspiration. In other words uh our generation um when we started making films in the

70s in Los Angeles were considered um uh young people who had studied to make movies you it really isn't the case to

study to make as one one of the professors at New York University at that time said the only reason to come

to film school is to get your hands on the equipment and to make the movie. They can't tell you how to make the

movie. Uh you have to have it in you. You have to have the inspiration, the passion. The the thing that that is

important was the inspiration from the professor. the um overriding the

overriding compelling uh um impulse that that this extraordinary powerhouse of two or three

films I saw once when I was five or six years old they pervaded everything and that's the Italian nealist films open

city but pais open city shoe shine and bicycle thieves four films and they over they they have sort of sort of had cast

their shadow over me and my family was Sicilian Americans uh uh along with uh musicals, westerns, noirs at the time,

although they weren't called noirs, they were just movies. Uh uh and all of British cinema uh the eing studio, but

more more Alexander Cer um uh Giche, I think he's pronounced Two Cities Films um and uh Paul Pressberger.

what we saw of them. It was very difficult to see their films except for the red shoes and um uh even Gainesboro

films but the um the overriding uh British cinema was the uh was a major influence. Um make your own

industry, recreate movies. Don't pay attention to industry. Do your own thing.

I mean, put it this way. Um, you want the work to be seen, but it doesn't have to be at the

Odon, you know, no more. That's all different. That's all. It's another ancient

world. That type of film, or not even that type of film, the the the communal experience is always important. You can

make a film on a camera the size of that doororknob and still show it to 1,600 people in an audience. It's still a

great communal experience. you know, uh it doesn't necessarily mean it has to cost over 100 million pounds. You know,

it's all new. You just break it open. Break open the form. Don't just uh just, you know, have your tripod and a a

camera that's standing on it. The cameras that are being made now and of course the fact that

all AFlex and and other cameras have stopped being made and whether we like it or not, we have to deal with a new a

new technology, a high definition or digital or whatever it's called. It's it changes cinematography, the artic

cinematography, but but you younger ones, you make a new art, take what's available, push it, you

know, because it's going to go there. You could do anything. For me, everything

I did to do with a camera, to do with editing was useful experience uh and stuff that

that paid off. uh when I came to actually you know make features and really everything you do you you learn

from in terms of anytime you're shooting something a short film particularly a short

film when you try to write the script for a short film it's very difficult to write a short film I think in some ways

it's harder than for a feature to have a complete idea in just a few minutes and have a beginning a middle and an end you

know have an appropriate conclusion so you learn a lot about narrative structure doing shorter films but really

every job I did including u you know corporate videos and industrial training films and things where I'd have to go to

a company and throw up some lights and shoot interviews you know with executives and things like that. Uh

you're always learning about your craft. You're always learning about uh you know how to balance the pragmatic

requirements race against time uh using the equipment you've got in a short space of time to sort of get something

that you can you can use. It's all useful experience when you're starting out

particularly, you have to play to your strengths. You have to do something that really excites you and whatever's

different about that. And in the case of following the the nonlinear structure was a somewhat unusual choice. Um, but

it's those things that are the strength of the project. uh it's the things that you can bring to what you're doing or

bring to the film making craft that maybe not everybody else is doing, maybe not everybody else can do or has thought

to do. That's what's going to distinguish the thing. So it might seem in some ways more difficult or seem like

something that would make the project more difficult to to sell when it's finished, you know, what have you. But

for me, I think the answer was definitely to try to play to my strengths and the things that I

personally uh was passionate about. I think working in in films today, it's an era where people tend to watch films

more than once, even if they don't like them. You know, you'll see it in the cinema on its first release perhaps, and

then you'll see it on, you know, cable television television, you'll watch it on an airplane or on a hotel room or

something, uh, or it winds up eventually on on regular TV. And so I think my generation of filmmakers understood

really there's a responsibility to try and make something that has layers, something that has more to it the second

time you see it or some different aspect to it. And I chose to take the path of incorporating that desire for for a

layered approach into the narrative itself, into the story if you like. And so I've made films that have some

ambiguity to them or some layering to them narratively so that if you see them a second time, you're going to watch

them in a slightly different way. That was that was my approach. There are other filmmakers who approached it from

a purely visual point of view where they would just create very dense visuals that that would sustain multiple

viewings because you'd sort of see more in the frame. Well, Momento was based on a short story

that my brother was writing and he he hadn't yet written it fully, but he described

the idea to me and I thought it would make an excellent film and I asked him if I could uh take the idea while he was

writing his short story whether I could take it and write a screenplay uh from it and thank goodness he he agreed to

that and let me do that. So he went off and wrote on the short story and I think it took him almost as long as it took me

to make the whole film as it did to to write the short story. And it's a very brilliant story uh that was that was

published in Esquire um right when the film came out. Uh and so it was an interesting collaboration um because I

had a lot of freedom to explore the idea that he'd given me and then as I got into sort of screenplay form then I

would show it to him and talk about how I could improve it. and he was a huge help with with that as well. So we we

had an excellent collaboration on it. It was very very important for both of us. I think the original inspiration behind

the Dark Knight trilogy and particularly Batman Begins uh it was about taking this beloved character and

recontextualizing the character, setting this extraordinary figure in an ordinary world or a seemingly ordinary world. And

so for me it was much more about creating a recognizably real scenario that the extraordinary figure of Batman

could exist in and addressing the origins of that the origin story which hadn't been told in films before hadn't

really even been addressed in the comics very specifically actually. Uh and so we were able to really look at that gap in

pop culture and say okay what if we try to ground this and really explain how this might happen in in a real world

scenario. That was always the jumping off point for the tone of the films and then the influences on the films were

very varied. I mean we were trying to build a world in the way that you know Ridley Scott had done in his films like

Bladeunner for example. We were looking at the silent era, Fritz Lang's films and so forth. Um, trying to figure out

the use of the geography of a city to express a sense of metaphor or allegory with the with the narrative we're

creating, which is what the world of Batman and Gotham as a sort of heightened version of of a regular city,

you know, a kind of New York on steroids, if you like. Those were a lot of things feeding into the way in which

we approached telling those those three stories or one big story over over three films. And we went into it not knowing

that we would get to make three films. We approached Batman Begins very much as an isolated piece, but always with a

sense that okay, if we could, we would return to Goth and we would try and flesh out, you know, a bigger story

because we were interested to see in our telling of Bruce Wayne's story. there was always a finite sense to what he was

doing and that's unusual in the interpretation. But our idea was that it felt that he would need to view this as

uh a character he's created or a symbol he's created to try and inspire the people of Gotham and that there would be

an endgame to that that he would have an effect on the world and then be able to to stop. And so we became very

interested in seeing how that story would play out. One of the things that's different about

my approach to music, the way I use it in my films is I don't use temp music. Uh temp music is, you know, when you

take existing music, music from other films usually, and when you're editing the film, you put a lot of that in. Uh

then you get a composer on after the fact and say, "This is, you know, do this but different." And to me, that

always results in cues that are not what you want because you've put what you want on there and then said, "Okay, do

something different." So by definition you're moving away from what what first inspired you. So the way I've always

worked with composers like David Julian or James New Howard Han Zimmer is to say okay let's look at the script let's talk

about the ideas and then sometimes before we're even shooting or while we're shooting

you know start sending me ideas musical ideas demos based on the narrative concepts based on just some visual

images. I'd tell him was with hands, you know, I'd send him some stills of what I was doing. Uh, and our approach in every

film has been been different, but the one underlying constant is to try to not ever use temp music, to try and always

be working with pieces that have been created specifically for the images that we're we're shooting and editing. I've

been greatly influenced by uh filmmakers of the past hugely. Um, I always point to George Lucas's first Star Wars film

as a seminal influence on me. It was the first film that I remember that that really just opened up the possibilities

of what you could do with movies. Ridley Scott has always been a tremendous influence on me. I've loved the worlds

he's created, the textured quality of those things. Terrence Malik is a huge influence and Stanley Cubri is a

filmmaker that I've always greatly admired although he's one that's difficult to try and imitate or learn

too much uh from specifically but uh as an inspiration just as a great genius of of cinema and then more recently um

specific to Dunkirk I think you know the cinema of Alfred Hitchcock uh Cluso uh filmmakers working in the suspense genre

were very important to I've also been very influenced by silent filmmakers. I go back to the work of Fritz Lang and

and Mau Fon Stroheim. Uh those visions, those um ideas of what movies could do before dialogue came in,

before contemporary narrative structures came in. I find going back to those that older form of storytelling in movies to

be very inspiring. I think really the only useful advice I ever got in terms of, you know, trying to figure out your

way in to the film business, the film industry is to get yourself a script and hang on to it.

Um, it's that idea, that screenplay, that that concept, you know, whatever that's going

to be that's so important. And you have to stick to your guns. You have to find something that you can do that maybe

other people couldn't do. Uh and even if that seems different or doesn't fit into people's expectations, that's what's

going to distinguish it if you can do it successfully. So I think it's really about sticking to your guns and you know

doing something you passionately believe in rather than uh trying to appeal to some desire that you imagine other

people have for what they want to see in a film. I think you have to be true to your own passion and your own sense of

what excites you as a storyteller. Advice to a young filmmaker is to make a movie every week in super eight or high

def. Write every night and every weekend shoot for two days and work with actors. Work with a little 1,00 W lighting kit.

Set it up. Set up your shots. Get a tripod. Shoot a little scene. Work with the actors. cut those scenes together

and then the next weekend have worked on it with sound and looping and put some music to it. It can all be done for

nothing nowadays with computer and get a response and get a response from the audience and see where it's slow and

where it doesn't work and where your ideas weren't being communicated properly. Learn from that experience

sitting in with the crowd. Then go out and make another picture the next weekend and just keep doing it. Make

films no matter what anybody says and you'll be a filmmaker. Work wherever you can. It doesn't matter what, a

documentary, a commercial, wherever you can get near a camera, wherever you can, especially if you're a director. You're

not going to be a director and get until you put your eye behind into that finder. And

uh it doesn't matter what. There's no such thing as good work or bad work. There's only work at the beginning.

Yeah. If you got if you got the passion, if you got the passion to do it and you do it and it doesn't like work out, I I

worked for got three years on a 16 mm film that ended up becoming nothing but guitar picks and uh and I was very

disappointed when I realized it wasn't any good. But it was my film school. All right. And I actually got away really

cheap. When it was all over, I knew how to make a movie. I didn't want to show anybody that, but I had the experience.

I had a lot cheaper than I would have gone if I'd gone to film school. The first thing you got to learn is listen.

Learn to listen, but learn to say no. And when you say no, mean it. Mean it. Don't say no and then just back off

because then and I don't mean I don't mean as a technical term, which is it's a great word. I mean it in the

existential term, you know. So, you know, don't back off because you have the chance. It's like it's like

quitting. What what can a director on his first movie do? Quit. But if you quit, quit. But there is a lot more

competition than there was when I was, you know, like kicking around with El Mariachi. So you got, you know, there's

just a lot more to do these days. You got a lot more competition cuz everybody's got a camera now and

everybody can edit and it's it's just it's tough. I don't know the state of independent film making changes. There's

like changes. But at the same time though, yeah, there's a lot more to competition, but also those crappy

movies aren't competition if thing is like dynamite. There go, you know, all that is, you know, yeah, there's a

lot of there's a lot of people out there doing stuff, but if you know, it's like waves on the beach. All right, you make

some make a piece of nitro that you throw in an audience's lap, they'll people notice. Say I hear about an

issue. Or perhaps I look at a place in my hometown of Los Angeles and and see, oh, that this this area is is

underrepresented. This group is under reppresented. I want to know more, you know, and so through the process of me

writing the screenplay and directing this film and editing the film, I I learn about this subject. So, it's it's

really a it's a sort of a selfish thing. It's a it's my way of continuing my education. The last five films I have

co-written. So, usually it starts with just basically a brainstorming session where I get on the phone or meet him

meet my co-screenwriter in person and we just talk about the possibilities. I do have to say the one thing that has been

consistent is that we usually figure out the end very soon into the process. Um, usually in that first brainstorming

session, we we are we at least have the beginning and end. The middle has to be worked out. Um, from that point on, it's

really about um, you know, I get getting to the point where I think that we are dedicated to

this issue, dedicated to the subject matter because I'm involved with the writing process. I'm also directing. I'm

also editing. I'm also seeing the film out into the world. It does take around three years for each film to be

completed from beginning to end. So, it's really it's about getting to that point where you are on board and you're

dedicated for the long ride. Yeah. People that I've met in real life inspire a character sometimes or

sometimes it's an amalgamation of many people. My current film, The Florida Project, there is a character by the

name of Bobby played by William Defoe. I would never have thought of this character unless through my research

process I had met many motel managers who all had this thing within them that was a uh a reluctant father figure of

the the motel that they were looking over. I mean, and the people who lived at the motel. So, um, so yes, I I would

say there's always some inspiration from real life, real life people that that, uh, help me create these characters. I

love mixing it up. I love having seasoned actors, interacting with first- timers, interacting with

non-professionals. And when I say non-professionals, those are the ones that we just grab off the street the day

of and say, "Be in our independent." And we never see them again. I've been very very lucky actually to to have found

first timers who have the knack who understand the craft of acting who have the gift of improvisation and more

importantly for me comedic improvisation it really comes down to you know character to character again film to

film I embrace all mediums you know I'm an advocate for all mediums what I'm not an

advocate for is getting rid of old mediums just because new ones come in so I have played with digital. I've played

with celluloid. I did experiment with the iPhone on on Tangerine and also a short um fashion film that I directed

and I had a great time doing it. I just worked on 35 so that was a whole other experience but it gave me something I

really wanted. I wanted that organic rich feel of something tangible in the big screen that was that was acquired

through a photochemical process. That's what I was looking for for this subject matter. And so it's really about it's

it's again project to project. You might start in a place where you are forced to shoot on a certain medium, but you

quickly have to say that's what got me to this place, but I'm going to have to now figure out how this movie can

benefit from this medium and how I can make this movie in a way where looking back on it years from now, I can say I

am so happy I shot in that medium because this film would not have been this film without that. I think the the

biggest challenge is is simply um is sticking with it. You know, for so many years, if you're an independent

filmmaker, you're barely paying rent. Um you before your work gets recognized, you're the only one who's going to

believe in your work. You know, the challenge was really just getting through the years, learning how to still

stay in the industry, keep keep up on current technology, uh, by taking editing jobs, by by by

shooting corporate videos, by doing whatever I can do to just to keep fresh. And then you're you're suddenly at a

place where, you know, the struggles of those earlier films that may not have gotten attention suddenly are getting

attention because you are your current one is. So, it works out in the end, but it's a it is a long road. It's a long

road. Um, and it's just about sticking with it. I would say as you're learning your craft of making

films, you also have to learn the business side of film making and how to sell your film, how to get it financed,

number one, then how to, you know, to to to sell your film after it's completed. That that takes that's uh something that

I think you should tackle early on. Trust me, you'll need it. You'll need that business sense. I actually wish

that I had a, you know, a double major, one in, you know, in and one in film and one in business or at least took

business classes. I think that's a major thing. And then also, I would say just, um, watch all films. You know, just

don't you don't just have to watch the criterion edition. Um, those are, you know, you learn just as much if not more

from watching bad films. keeping uh yourself open to you know when you're you're watching films watch all genres

you know watch watch all nationalities of of films I think uh uh it can only it can only help you why did you want to

become a director I didn't really want to become a director I wanted to make films I knew

next door to nothing about film I wanted to be a painter and I was a

painter and I was in a uh studio working on a painting of a garden

at night and the green was coming out of this black and I heard a uh wind and I saw

the green move and I said, "Oh, that is interesting." and I thought it would be good to do a

moving painting. So, uh, there was an experimental painting and sculpture

contest at the end of the year at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts where I went to school. And, uh, for

that contest, I did a sculptured screen with three heads out of polyester resin and some painting on the screen

about 6 feet by 8t. the screen was and then I stopped motioned kind of animated but in a stop motion fashion a uh thing

that I called sixman getting sick and that was my uh film in 16 mm a little tiny balon howl camera that had single

frame capabilities and it was so expensive to make that

film relative relative to what I had then I thought that would be it that it was just an

experiment. But someone saw that and commissioned me to make one for him and that led to another whole thing.

Falling in love with film and uh getting green lights. I made um a short film called

The Alphabet and with the money I got from this gentleman who commissioned me. And

there's there's a whole bunch of things that happened, but I ended up making not what he wanted, but um something that

combined animation and live action. And then I wrote a script um for a film called The

Grandmother. And at that time uh the American Film Institute was starting and they were offering independent filmmaker

grants and on a real long shot because they wanted previous work and a script and I had both those things.

So on this long shot, I applied for an independent filmmakers grant and the first group um I wasn't in the first

group but and I had to wait a long time but I got a phone call that changed my life completely because I won this grant

to make the grandmother and I made the grandmother and on the

strength of that I got accepted to the American Film Institute, which was in Beverly Hills, California, in a

mansion. Um, and I thought I'd died and gone to heaven. So, I went out there and,

uh, one thing led to another and I got the opportunity to make Eraser Head. Uh, I got started as a writer, director,

probably just watching movies as a kid and then, uh, wanting to make films. Uh, grew up Nashville. My dad made

documentaries and I I just just follow him around as a kid. Carnivals and circuses. You would just make films

about kind of strange characters, moonshiners, kids that ride bowls, you know, uh, just different different

things. And I I don't know, you grow up around the around that world and you kind of I don't know, becomes like what

you know. And it was exciting to me. And so when when I was in Nashville in high school, I started making films and and

uh in school and then probably went moved to New York after high school and then went to school for writing for a

little for a little bit and and there I kind of you just learn like you know essential basic things, formatting and

stuff, three-act structures, it was you know stuff like that. But mostly what I mostly what I know about writing movies

was just from other movies, watching other films like pacing and different things I just kind of would would pick

up on from just watching, you know, Buster Keen movies or something. they always have. I just have lots of I

sometimes it's so so many ideas it's hard to figure out what you know what it is exactly or you know where it's coming

from or you know sometimes it's hard to tell which way's up or you know where you're at in life or what this dream

means or what it's saying. I don't know. You know, it's uh you just get sometimes just pictures just things and then you

just kind of make up characters and story lines and just feel a certain way and just invent it. If I if if if I have

like a really hard time with something, I'd usually just scrap it. Just if it if I really like if I find it like

something if I'm smashing my head up against the wall too much is for a reason. It's just it's not meant to be.

So I I try not to struggle too much with it. I don't have like the end result in my mind when I start. I'm like trying to

search for it, you know? I'm trying to make it up as I go. I'm trying to react to something. the movies are more about

kind of energy or a kind of wildness or something that's like less defined, you know, something that's more like a magic

or something. So, I don't really go in like knowing. So, usually when I'm at the end, even if it doesn't work, even

if it's maybe some type of a mistake or failure, at least I know it's interesting and then I I went for it.

understanding what it's like to live a little bit outside uh the common

realm. You know what I mean? Uh and then know what it's like to experience extreme highs and lows. And you

know, if you get locked up, you get locked up. it. You have a story to tell. What advice I would give writer

directors? You know, I would just say try to be great. Try to give extra. Try to, you know, be bold.

Try to invent your own reality. Try to, you know, do what's not been done before. I would just say don't even get

started if you're going to just try to do some mediocre because there's so much of that. Don't Don't do it just to

make noise. There's too much noise. Give me something amazing. Give me something new. Give me something I

haven't seen before in a way I haven't seen it. Let me feel something. Give me uh find some kind of magic. Go towards

something that's inexplicable. Uh give it to me. Give me something that's aggressive and gnarly

and chew up the world. Come at it from some other place, but just don't don't give me the same over and over

again because I don't want it. My name is DNV and I'm the director of Bladeunner 2049. I I'm from the

documentary world. I I try to make a short story. I did uh several uh documentaries for uh Canadian

Broadcasting Corporation, CBC uh the French part of it for Canada and then I worked at the National Film Board uh to

make my first documentary there and from there but me my soul I wanted to do fiction went from there to to to start

to do fiction. I did a short with producer and then we did I did my first feature film this way. There's a a a

famous producer uh in Montreal. His name is Rajiv Frappier and he he wanted to meet the generation of new filmmakers

and he decided to create a a feature film made of six short film. Half of them would be directed by a female

director, the other half by male director and uh those short film will be linked together made as a role and

presented in in a theater later. So as a old feature film I participate I was one of the director and after that the movie

was was quite nice little success at home it went to can and so after that the producer offered me to to produce my

first feature so it was like offered on a silver plate I must say my first I was the luckiest yeah uh the thing is that I

I uh I made a film my my fourth feature film was uh uh nominated for an academy award and and uh my it's like my third

and fourth feature were were uh traveled a lot around the world and noticed by the film industry in Hollywood and and

when I did my fourth one went to academia award I received numerous offers to direct uh at the time I didn't

necessarily wanted to go to Hollywood I was I didn't want to uh to direct uh silly sequels or things like that

it's just that I I it happened that I read a screenplay that was very strong in my opinion that has strong potential

and that was linked with some themes that I was exploring in in my movies at home. They offered me a a movie called

prisoners and I decided that as a filmmaker that it would be a nice uh experience to work with artist from

United States as a very strong artist. I took that opportunity as a want just uh I will do it once and uh it turned out

to be a fantastic experience. I was really uh moved by how uh Americans are dealing with film making. I just fell in

love with uh with their ways of of dealing with cinema and and the the artist and the craft the the amount of

experience there and uh I just uh what I thought would be a one time would became uh my

life. I know that uh uh my movies are usually quite immersive and and there's like a a strong feeling of intimacy that

you have to uh they are constructed around a very precise point of view. The more I work with them, the more I I feel

comfortable and I love working with actors and the more I feel inspired. I'm trying when I cast my actors to uh I

hope my big desire is to meet people that will inspire me and uh it's not all the actors are all different. I love

when someone is is an author himself, meaning that it has it will develop his very own uh point of view about the

character bring ideas on the set that will surprise me. I mean, I have always a very precise idea about what I want to

do. But there's nothing more exciting for me than when someone create chaos in front of the camera. And and it's all

going back to the years I was doing documentaries. I was always amazed how life organize itself in front of the

camera. From chaos, chaos becomes poetry and and and this excitement of of the spontaneity of life. I find it back with

actors and and I'm trying to create environments on set that will be um that will allow allow this thing those things

to happen. I try to give them the space as much as possible so they they feel that they have the space to to bring

ideas. One day the screenplay of of Bladerunner arrived in front of me because the producer had done a previous

movie with me, Prisoners and and uh Alcon was looking for a director at the time. They had uh it was really Scott

was supposed to direct it but his calendar was uh schedule was too busy has too many movies in the same time. So

they were looking for a director and at at first I was really uh destabilized and and uh deeply curious and and

terrorized by the idea of reading the screenplay. I understood that from the because of theatics what what the movie

was dealing with about the memory about identity quest of identity. It had a link with my previous work and and um uh

it made sense that I could do this movie. I would I understand why they came to me and I knew that technically I

was able to do it. It's a movie I would have refused 10 years ago. No question. But one day I I read it. I said I can do

it. I know how to do this. I love the the first movie so much. It's a movie that uh was part of my cinematic

education. I was like raised with Bladeunner. It's a movie that was uh by far one of my favorite movie of all

time. So it's I said I don't want someone else to this up. I mean I need I need to even it's it's like a a

suicidal mission you know it's like super risky everybody will hate me I can be banned from the cinematic community

from the rest of my life but it worth the risk artistically it's such a big challenge

but such a beautiful one it's crazy idea to do that maybe a very bad idea but I was mesmerized by the story of the

screenplay and I said yes there was a lot of female parts strong female characters not like anything I have read

before. There were more female characters in the movie than there's a male protagonist and that I thought was

really u faithful to the first movie that uh had the same kind of quality. There was hints of the melancholia of

the first movie to that uh I thought was very important. they were there. There were the the germs the seeds for that

sorry the seeds for that milakaria was were in the screenplay and and uh that reassured me in order to be very spont

spontaneous spontaneous on set you need to for me I need to to to be very prepared and specifically with a movie

of that scale uh everything will be designed everything will be created so the crew doesn't go mad you need to

really be uh precise So you need to storyboard everything. I deeply love storyboarding. Uh why? Because it allows

me in a very quiet environment with good coffee and no pressure at all to dream about the movie alone, you know, to make

the movie I want the the the the ideal movie without bad weather, without producer on my back, without actors that

don't want to sit there lines. I can do the movie I want once on paper. And I deeply love that process. I'm alone with

a storyboard artist and I draw every frame and I dream about it. I deeply love that moment. In my first movies, I

thought that the storyboards were castrative and they were like something that will be in your way as your but

it's total opposite. I deeply love them now and uh and uh it doesn't mean that I will shoot the story boards on on set.

Sometimes I just Roger Dickens and I we just throw them and say okay let's do something different because on the day

there's some a better idea on set. But most of the time uh it's a very powerful tool also to communicate for the crew.

So yes, I storyboard everything when you storyboard also it's a it's a way to transform the movie into images and and

I always it's a way to rewrite the screenplay in the way I wanted. So it's a very very important moment in the film

process. I'm very old-fashioned. I I I can I don't like to work with several cameras. I work with one single camera.

I like to commit to one point of view and and uh I I don't like to make any compromise when you look with several

you work with several camera cameras in the obligation to according to make compromise with lenses and that and and

with lighting and that I can't so I like to commit to one thing and and and to just embrace that and fully commit and

so uh I will say that technically I no matter the scale of the movie I I work with one camera I try to uh to adjust

the language to each stories what what the story will need. I must say that uh for three or of my four last movies have

the same kind of language cinematic language. There's a kind of research of of uh trying to be as simple and then

monolithic as possible that I deeply love and and I I'm hypnotized by this this this approach. I deeply love it.

Right now I feel the urge to do something different but in the past five four or five movies I was quite similar

cinematic approach in some ways. Yeah I would say I wanted to make a feature film before 30 years old. I was obsessed

with this idea and it was not a good thing. I should have uh take more my time for the first one. I didn't have to

uh hurry that much. take more my time, live a little, read more books. That's what I would say. Well, I

started off as a child actor and my dad directed some theater. But early on, I realized that a lot of the people who

were directing me in television had been actors. And so, you know, literally by the time I was eight or nine years old,

I think I had it in my mind that um I loved the business. I might one day want to be a director. And um and I was given

an 8 mm camera. Uh, I didn't really start playing around with it seriously until about uh, I don't know, 14 or 15.

But I think the key to all of that, of course, it's so much more advanced now, is starting to grasp an understanding of

the power of editing. Well, actors are always at the center of the of the sort of um, the

problem solving that goes with with trying to work a scene out. and whether it's movement or with lines, what they

have to say. Um, and so I think it's a really great training ground. It's not seeing the whole picture. Uh, but

nonetheless, um, the, you know, the the process is kind of similar. Then when you start directing, you just step away

and you don't just look at your characters problems and questions. You sort of look at the overview of the uh

of the story. So uh for me it was a pretty natural um transition even I even suggest to people who have no interest

whatsoever in acting but want to be directors or writers producers to take some acting classes to be in some plays

understand what it is to sort of be vulnerable be out there and be a part of telling the story you know communicating

it directly to the audience. It was important to me to be as adventurous as I could be and not get

labeled the way I had been as an actor. But also, you know, it's just a reflection of the kinds of movies that I

love. Like the one thing you haven't seen yet is a horror film. I I don't think I would understand how to really

make a good horror film, but I do love fantasy and sci-fi. So, that genre doesn't intimidate me. Uh and uh uh I

think it's, you know, it's it's uh you know, it's just fun fun to explore. At least it is for me.

you know, directors, some of them, some of us are sweethearts, some of us are jerks, some of us are talkative, some

are very quiet. Um, none of that really matters very much, although I, you know, I always I always think it's nice to be

decent to people, but that's me. Uh, it's not imperative. The big thing is taste. Taste and judgment. That's what

it's all about. And it's it's uh it's understanding, you know, what's what exists within the possibilities of

the story you're interested in telling, you know, and and and um and and how many of those details can you capture?

How can you sequence them together in the editing? You know, what does that add up to? And um it really doesn't much

matter how you get there, whether there's a large crew or a small crew, whether it takes a long time or just a

little while. What it really matters is what did you get and what does it mean to other people when you edit it

together and share it with them. I think that the big challenge is still trying to get uh

basic emotional ideas expressed in a challenging um logistically complicated place. So

either the weather is a factor, crowds, um technical difficulties, all that's going on. And in the middle of it is

something really human and emotional that's going to require, you know, acting with with focus and sensitivity.

The combination of those two things are always when I'm most on edge when I'm on the set because, you know, if you if you

fail in one area or the other, the whole the whole scene is destroyed. You're not going to get it that day. And that's a

whole day of resources, you know, lost. And that's always a shame. One of the things that I suggest to

almost anybody and I do it myself from time to time is whatever the genre, if there's a movie and there's a there's a

that you particularly like and there are sequences that you remember and and that you you think are

cool. Watch them over and over again. and watch him a couple of times with with sound and then watch him a couple

of times without sound because when you pull the sound out which is like the final finish that really in a lot of

ways brings a lot of you know gives a lot of the impact to a scene. You also begin to see really how the filmmakers

captured those images. Did they use the same shots over and over and keep cutting back to them? Was it always a

different shot and a different angle? Is the camera moving? Is it static? you know, what's the what's the language

that they're using and what does it mean? Um, and it answers so many questions because we we sort of

understand movies intuitively, but when you really start breaking them down and understanding what was done on the day

to create that that sequence of shots that we love that make that has an impact on us, you know, it's like a

light goes off. You just begin it it simplifies everything and removes a lot of the mystery. anybody can shoot

anything, but it's how you how you begin to build it and piece it together that I think means the most. And uh, of course,

the the the edi editorial software is so cool now that, you know, you anybody should take advantage of that and um,

you know, and start putting together putting together images.

Um, I actually wrote the story and produced Indiana Jones. I didn't actually direct it. It was that other

guy that looks like me. Um uh I'll give you two things. Um one which I've answered a few times

here around the table, so I figured I'd share it with everybody. Um which is, you know, how did I end up where I am?

Uh and um when I was in high school, I was a consumate

underachiever. Uh I hated school. Uh, I love to build things. Uh, I loved woodworking. I loved

uh working on cars and engines. Worked in a foreign car service and all I wanted to do was race cars. Um, right

before graduation, I was in a terrible automobile accident and uh was almost killed and as a result of

that sort of sat in a hospital for a long time thinking about my place in the world. uh and decided that I would give

education another try and uh took my very bad grades to a junior college and discovered social

science uh the humanities. Uh became very infatuated with uh anthropology and psychology and suddenly found something

that I really loved uh and um did very well. And then um when I graduated and I was about to go on to the last two years

of college uh at San Francisco State to get a degree in anthropology. Uh my best friend who had grown up with since I was

four years old uh said, you know, come with me to to uh to Stockton. I have to take a test to get into USC and I don't

want to do it alone and come on, just take test with me so I don't have to be there all by myself. So I said, "Okay."

So, I went up there and took the test, not thinking that I'd pass, but I did pass. And actually, I got accepted at

USC. And I said to my friend, uh, well, now what am I going to do? I said, I really like anthropology and I think I

want to do that. He said, yeah, but you you wanted to go to art center. You really wanted to be an artist and you

know, this is your second choice, anthropology. And I did. I wanted to be an an

artist, a photographer. I'd done a lot of photography and I wanted to be an illustrator. But my father said,

"There'll be no artists in this family." you know, that's a horrible way to make a living. Uh, and if you want to go and

be an artist, then you're going to have to pay for it. And he knew me well enough to know that I wasn't about to do

that. I will take the route of least resistance. I had sort of picked up my grades, but I was still a consequent

underachiever. And uh, so he said, "Well, you know, SC, they've got a a a department there of photography." I

said, "Oh, that sounds good." He said, "It's easier than P. You'll love it." I said, "Well, okay. maybe I'll do that.

So, I went down there and it wasn't a school of photography. It was a school of cinematography. And it wasn't

actually a school of cinematography. It was actually a school of cinema where you learn to make movies. And I said,

"This is insane. You mean you go to university and you can learn how to make movies. I'd never heard of such a silly

thing." So, uh, and I hadn't really paid much attention to movies when I was young. I sort of watched a little bit of

television stuff. went and saw Earth Versus the Flying Saucers and, you know, Bridge on the River Cho and a few things

like that, but I didn't know anything about movies. And I got there my first semester, I had to take a lot of

requirements, you know, Spanish, uh, science, that sort of stuff, but I got to take two classes. One was a

history of movies. Um, and growing up in a very small town with one movie theater, I hadn't seen a lot of movies.

And, um, I we didn't get a television until I was 10. So in those days, one of the main advantages of being in a film

school is when you take a history class or something, you actually got to see movies that you couldn't see. It's an

amazing thing, the world you live in today, you can actually go down to a store and just get any movie that's

almost ever been made and you can see it and then you can actually have the filmmaker, you know, in the extra bonus

disc tell you how they made it and everything. That's basically what a film school was, except you were surrounded

by a lot of kids that sort of believe the same thing you did. So I got there and I learned about movies which I

really didn't know anything about in terms of the history of movies watching really great movies and I had a

production class introduction to animation uh where eventually they gave me one

minute film and they said here run the camera you know follow these instructions move it to the right move

it to the left move it up move it down and so I took that little assignment with my one minute of film and I made a

one minute movie out of it uh I took a lot of still photographs and created a collage and a whole different way of

doing animation and put a soundtrack to it. Uh my professor was unbelievably uh impressed with it. Uh and uh it blew

everybody away in the film department and they sent it out to festivals and it won like 47 festivals. And I said, "Wow,

I know how to do this. I'm actually pretty good. Matter of fact, I'm better than anybody here. Uh I love this. You

know, this I want to do this the rest of my life." And so I was lucky enough to find my path, my passion. Before that I

had passions, you know, I wanted to be an artist. I wanted to build cars. I wanted to create things.

Um, but uh and I liked anthropology. I really wanted I was very interested in social

science, very interested in why we do things, you know, where we came from, uh, all kinds of, you know, mythology.

Um, and I realized after a few years, you know, and then I went to film school, made movies, and ended up being

where I am. But I realized that I was following on everything I did. I was following something I really cared

about, something I loved, something I was passionate about. And I kept following that passion, whether it was

cars, whether it was anthropology, uh, whether it was art, um, photography. Um, and eventually it led me to my huge

passion, my real passion, which was making movies, which combined all of those things. And I realized that had I

gone on to get my degree in anthropology, I would have probably made anthropological movies in New Guinea or

someplace and eventually been on National Geographic and, you know, the History Channel and uh been then making

features and I'd have done Star Wars just the same. If I'd have gone to art center and become an illustrator, I

would have probably started doing animation and doing animated films and making animated things and then

ultimately I would have gone on and been right where I was. So no matter which route I took because I cared about all

of them, they all led to the same place. Had I done what my father had wished me to do, which is to go into these office

equipment business with him, which I knew I wasn't going to do. I knew I hated that, my life would have been

unpleasant. And um so I think it's very important not to do what your um peers think you should do, not do what your

parents think you should do or your teachers, but to do what you inside or even your culture thinks, but do what's

inside you. You know, when I went to film school, everybody said, "Well, you're nuts. What are you going to film

school for?" You know, you're only there's nobody from a film school had ever gotten a job in the film business.

Just had never happened. So you were just doomed to be a ticket taker at Disneyland. So they was like, why would

you do that? You know, why don't you take a major that you can actually get a job at? Why do But once I fell in love

with it, there was no going back even though I had absolutely no chance of making in the film business. And I did

the same thing when I um graduated. I moved back to San Francisco. And he said, "Well, you can't make movies in

San Francisco. You're crazy." I said, "But I don't want to be in Hollywood. I don't want to do that. I don't like

those kind of movies. I want to do different kind of movies." And um they said, "Well, you'll fail. It'll just

never happen." and we managed to make it work in San Francisco. So, that's the long story of

how I got here. Uh, another short story of one thing I discovered along the way is

that several speakers have talked about happiness and I've discovered along the way that happiness you have you live in

two worlds here. Happiness is pleasure and happiness is joy. You know, it can be either one. You add them up and it

sort of falls under the uber category of happiness. Pleasure is short-lived. Uh it lasts an hour, lasts

a minute, lasts a month. Um and it uh peaks and then goes down. It peaks very high. But the next time you want to get

that same peak, you have to do it twice as much. You know, it's like drugs, you know, just you have to keep doing it

because it insulates itself. No matter what it is, whether you're shopping, uh whether you're uh you know engaged in

any other kind of pleasure, uh that all has the same quality about it. On the other hand is joy. And joy is the thing

that doesn't go as high as pleasure in terms of your emotional reaction, but it stays with

you. Joy uh is something you can recall. Pleasure you can't. Uh so the secret is that even though it's not as intense as

the pleasure, the joy will last you a lot longer. Um and people who get the

pleasure, they keep saying, "Well, if I can just get richer and get more cars, you know, I I'll never You'll never

relive the moment you got your first car. That's it. That's the highest peak." Yes, you can get three Ferraris

and a new uh uh Gulfream jet and maybe you'll get close, but you have to keep going and eventually you run out and you

just can't do it. Doesn't work. So, if you're trying to sustain that level of peak pleasure, you're

doomed. It's a very American idea, but it just can't happen. You just let it go. Peak, great. Pleasure is fun. It's

great, but you can't keep it going forever. Just accept the fact that it's here and it's gone. and maybe again

it'll come back and you'll get to do it again. Joy lasts forever. Pleasure is purely self-centered. It's all about

your pleasure. It's about you. It's about it's a selfish self-centered emotion that's created by

a self-centered motive of greed. Joy is compassion. Joy is giving yourself to somebody else or something

else. And it's a kind of thing that is in its subtlety and lowness much more powerful

than pleasure. If you get hung up on pleasure, you're doomed. If you pursue joy, you will find

everlasting happiness. So with that, I'm gone. Bye-bye. Thank you. This is a 44

Magnum. As you know, the most powerful handgun in the world. Not anymore, but it was then. And it has fired neither

five nor six because it's empty. And this is one of the original guns from the movie. And when I did the second

movie, I said, "I want one of those guns. Can't you get the prop department to steal one of those guns and give it

to me?" So, um, Clint and, uh, Warner Brothers publicity guy arranged to to get that.

They put a plaque on it, everything. So, it's it's a very valuable gun now. It's become an

icon. Anytime you make a movie, there's lots of scene changes. And if the director wanted to and said, "I'm going

to do your script exactly the way it's written," which I do when I direct one of my scripts, you know, obviously when

you're there on the spot, you're going to change things. You're going to find things that are better and worse and the

actors are going to say different things and so there's going to be a lot of say a lot of changes and stuff like that.

And people always say, "Well, what part is your original?" I said, "All the parts you liked.

Clint East was very very um much that way. Very quiet, very, you know, no big deal. Very unpretentious. There's

there's no everything is is straight up. It's just what it is. Um, I am sure that he had no trouble all

of his life in dealing with fans or anything like that because he probably changed very little as time went on. Um,

he's basically the same guy now that I that I knew back then, you know, and he and he was a very good person. He's a

very generous person. He's one of the few actors that um if you call him up, he'll always call you back in an hour or

two, you know. And I've I've made movies that are some of that other actors who were famous actors, their best movies.

And if I call them up, they'll say, "What does he want? I better check." You know, none of that with Clint. Clint's

right up there. You know, everybody admires him. you know, because of that he has those old almost Midwest

values. My, you know, kind of input into the character came from a number of things. I knew a cop who was kind of a

dirty hairy type cop and he he'd shot quite a number of people. He was a Long Beach detective. and he said always he

said when um when I'm put on the case the verdict is in and he didn't usually bring the

people back you know and he and he was kind of he was a real classic kind of character because he was he was more out

of LA confidential than than Dirty Harry but he was an interesting guy because he in his part-time was a dog trainer and

he was very gentle in training the dogs that he believe that um you had to be very gentle in training dogs, but he was

not gentle with human beings. You know, I don't know.

[Music] Fore speech. [Music]

More speech. Mhm. for

[Music] foreign. [Music]

for what I want. Fore

speech. [Music] [Music]

I'm [Music] forch.

for foreign. foreign speech.

Everybody thinks that directing is an exercise of control. Well, look, to me, uh, it's a strange profession we chose

as directors because it's a combination of being tough as nails and being as permeable and fragile

as you can. And you need to sort of separate the two. You cannot be completely fragile because then you

won't make movies. You could used to become a poet or a painter, you know, because a filmmaker is never going to

die and they're going to find a drawer full of movies that he never did. Oh my god. And it's going to be on DVD and

Blu-ray. It won't be, you know, you have to be a tough mother to get into the business side and fight and tell the

bastards, "No, no, and I'm no, I won't do it. I'll do it my way." All a lot of fights. So you have to be tough in that

and you have to fight and and be able to defend what the movie needs to be defended. And then at the same time you

need to be incredibly incredibly permeable and fragile. And for example, you can be screaming at your producer uh

one moment about the crane not being ready and then you have to be completely open with your actor to watch the actor

perform. You cannot. So it's very very strange and that goes for the childlike imagination. You have to preserve that

and uh yes it can get really bad but I think that's the one thing that um that experience gives you. I've been doing

this for 25 years now and you know after year 20 you go into the set and there is a certain thing that clicks and allows

you but you're always mortally afraid. You are what you are and that's what you bring to to the movies you make. It

doesn't all we can do as artists is the synthesis of something that has been done before. We're 2,000 years in at

least in civilization. Every song has been sung, every story has been told, but your voice hasn't been heard. Your

voice is yet to be heard. And in that I package two things that are one and the same. Your qualities and your defects.

And as a Latin American, the way I live it, we could be having dinner and somebody says, "I saw a ghost." And they