A scientist shouldn't be asked to judge the economic and moral value of his work. All we should ask the scientist to do is find the truth and then not keep it from anyone.
I purposefully try to make films in that grey area, where things are morally ambiguous. It's like life: good people do horrible things, and bad people do good things, and there's beauty in horror and horror in beauty.
If I see something that's morally ambiguous or ambiguously beautiful or has some pull in some way, I won't censor myself; I always run towards the light.
I had a guidance counsellor who made me take an aptitude test, and told me I should be a bricklayer.
When I was a kid, I loved Nicholas brothers films. It was like skateboarding. Even Gene Kelly: I always preferred him to Fred Astaire, just because he was more athletic, like skateboarding.
Some of the most radical work is being done in the most commercially pop venues, and some of the most boring work is being done in avant-garde territory.
I always wanted the films to play in malls, and I wanted as many people as possible to see them. I never want them to be marginalized in the kind of rarefied, elitist world. I always have hopes that the films will permeate culture in a big way. A lot of times, I'm wrong, but it's always the hope.
I've always wanted to be a very commercial director, or I had dreams of making these movies into blockbusters. And with each movie, they tell me it's not that way.
I'm not a video brat. I don't derive all my inspiration through movies. I get it from a lot of other places, too.
When I had my first camera - I was a child of the '80s. I remember what it was like reusing the same tapes over and over again, and having really bad quality and images kind of bubbling up from under the surface.
Cinema sustains life. It captures death in its progress.
I never cared about making one coherent masterpiece with a conventional narrative. I always wanted my movies to have images falling from all directions in a vaudevillian way. If you didn't like what was happening in one scene, you could just snooze through it until the next scene.
I studied writing at NYU. I graduated high school in Nashville and then went to the creative writing program, and in the first year, that's when I wrote 'Kids.'
You can still make music that people love, but there won't be more innovation. I started listening to electronic music a long time ago. But mostly I listen to rap. I think rap is the most interesting.
I have a pretty good family. But ever since I was little, I just felt like I wanted to be on my own. It was the same thing about school.
What makes Gucci Mane Gucci Mane is like what made Frank Sinatra Frank Sinatra - it's just him. He's trap's Frank Sinatra.
I always get sick of these conversations where people are so obsessed with pixels, with high definition, and even with technology in general. I find it just dull and heartless. And so I wanted to use only the worst machines.
I use to live on this street when I was a kid where there was an old person retirement home, and all of the old people would listen to that band Herman's Hermits, and they would wear white nursing shoes. And they would throw away stacks of VHS tapes, and I would go through the trash and take them.
I had these experiences as a kid; I remember certain things happening in school that were horrifying that I would see, certain things of violence or certain things of cruelty, but around that, something might happen afterwards to cause everyone to laugh, and that always blew me away.
I don't even know how people read new fiction anymore because there's so much old fiction that exists that seems great that's unread. It's overwhelming to me. But, I mean, I do read. But there probably haven't been many people less literate than me that have been in 'The Paris Review.'
