But even if I'm left high and dry at the end of this wild journey, just taking it is a great feeling.
The great film editor is not a cutter, he's a storyteller, right?
Every great film should seem new every time you see it.
I have been enormously lucky. My first role was in a great film by a woman director.
The way Hollywood works, you're never sure if their first thought is to make a great film and honor the material or just another business property.
We work in an environment where your options are to do, you know, Batman 10, so when you get to do a movie that's a really great film like this, people really step up to the plate and enjoy it.
I never had a great role in a great film.
When you are making the one you are doing, you think it is the greatest film going. And then you do another one and it is a great film.
I think the script is the key. Regardless of how great everybody else is working on a film, if you're working on a script that you don't think is great, you're not gonna be able to make a great film. Whereas if the script is great, then you can.
Tisch has a great film program and a great acting program, but they are segregated; you don't really intertwine. My peers knew I liked acting, so they'd be like, 'Go get that guy Gubler. He'll be in your student film.' I was in the same building. I became their go-to guy. So I left NYU having been in probably one thousand short films.
Great art direction is NOT the same thing as great film direction!
I knew Secrets and Lies was a great film, but I didn't expect it to get the attention it did because none of his other films had and I thought they were just as good.
Some people make a great film and then they can't follow up.
My initial attraction to 'Red Tails' was the opportunity to play a character that was not me. 'Stomp the Yard' was a great film, but I played myself there.
'Stomp the Yard' was a great film. It was a great film, great opportunity. It's the reason I live in Atlanta to this day, that film. But as far as acting goes, it wasn't very challenging. I played me.
I've been really lucky to work with some really great film people in the past, but television works on a much quicker schedule, and it's the TV directors I've worked with that I looked to and became a big fan of.
Even today, I'm not sure why I make films or what makes me want films. I think it's other people's films. Whenever I see a really great film, I think, 'I want to make a film like that.' And then I never do.
I watch 'Goodfellas,' and suddenly it frees me up entirely; it reminds me of what great film directing is all about.
The collective experience of watching a great film together in a room is a transcendent moment that will never die.
A lot of Jews are great friends of mine.
