Izzi: Remember Moses Morales? Tom Verde: Who? Izzi: The Mayan guide I told you about. Tom Verde: From your trip. Izzi: Yeah. The last night I was with him, he told me about his father, who had died. Well Moses wouldn't believe it. Tom Verde: Izzi... Izzi: [embraces Tom] No, no. Listen, listen. He said that if they dug his father's body up, it would be gone. They planted a seed over his grave. The seed became a tree. Moses said his father became a part of that tree. He grew into the wood, into the bloom. And when a sparrow ate the tree's fruit, his father flew with the birds. He said... death was his father's road to awe. That's what he called it. The road to awe. Now, I've been trying to write the last chapter and I haven't been able to get that out of my head! Tom Verde: Why are you telling me this? Izzi: I'm not afraid anymore, Tommy.
Animators have to live life 24 times as long as we do - every 24 frames of a second.
Turning 30 was when my parents both got cancer and were fighting it and beat it, but their mortality started to get to me. Everything wasn't as hunky-dory like it was.
It would be nice to make a movie that other people want to make, because every one of these movies, I basically have to find the only company in the world that's willing to make it, and it's always a big challenge. I end up spending a tremendous amount of energy and time trying to get money to make these movies and it's exhausting.
Now there is so much expertise and brainpower it's hard to be at the cutting edge of what's cool and not do something that's totally geeky.
'Angel Heart' was one of my favorite films.
I spent about a year and a half doing technical post work on 'The Fountain'. Although I do like the process, I think my favorite part of filmmaking is the actors.
I'm Godless. I've had to make my God, and my God is narrative filmmaking.
Comic books and graphic novels are a great medium. It's incredibly underused.
If you ask any person on this crew what they think of Hugh Jackman they'll admit they've never seen anything like it. I'll give him an emotional note and he'll hit it every time.
There's always been a lot of pressure and tension on the line. If 'Pi' didn't work out, I have no idea what my career would be. I don't think I would have gotten another shot at it. If 'Requiem for a Dream' didn't work out, they would have called me a 'one-hit wonder with a sophomore slump'.
I hope that Requiem is better than Pi. I hope that Pi is better than my student films, and I'm hoping that I'm getting better as I get older.
At the end of Requiem all I wanted to do was get a DV camera and just do a small film. But then the hunger comes back.
I was a TV junkie as a kid. I am the Sesame Street generation.
These wrestlers aren't organized. They have no union, no pension and no insurance. You meet wrestler after wrestler who sold out Madison Square Garden ten years ago, basically running on fumes today. There's a lot of drama there.
I wasn't a big fan of social anthropology. And, luckily, that created room for me to work in visual arts because I sort of ignored my requirements. I think I was attracted to social anthropology because I liked to travel and was always interested in far-off places.
I try to live my life where I end up at a point where I have no regrets. So I try to choose the road that I have the most passion on because then you can never really blame yourself for making the wrong choices. You can always say you're following your passion.
