Zitat des Tages von Peter Landesman:
Will Smith is the most successful money-making movie star on planet Earth, in terms of just how many people have gone to see his films, so Will is a guy who gets movies made.
I was doing an investigative article on arms trafficking that was taking me through Eastern Europe and the Middle East. And after I had interviewed a helicopter pilot who had been ferrying weapons into Liberia, I realized as I left the restaurant that I was being followed and set up for an ambush.
When a director is also a writer, everyone on the production looks to him, knowing he gave birth to the idea. There's a different level of viability.
Life only has narrative when we frame it and edit it and call it certain things.
As a filmmaker, it's not my intent to trigger or shape national discourse. My task is to make as powerful and understandable a film as I can. What happens next is what happens next.
The itinerary of most antiquities from their source - tomb, temple, quarry - to the shelves of museums or private collectors is murky and often purposely concealed.
As a journalist, as a screenwriter and as a director, I'm trying to tell compelling and truthful stories.
I can't worry about the consequences of what I do; that's not my job.
Film brings together framing and light and color and performance and music and all of that. To me, everything I've done in my life has been preparing me for filmmaking.
Film is probably the medium best suited to reach the most people - the visual, the aural, the limbic, the intellectual: it captures all these parts of our mind and soul. No other art form comes close.
A museum's meticulous presentation - exhaustive captions, hushed lighting, state-of-the-art armature - creates an institutional authority that is constructed to seem impregnable.
I'd followed the strange deaths of pro football players for years, sensing something odd going on.
I started writing screenplays myself and eventually directing.
Refugees tend to avoid planes, airports and fake passports, even though flying may appear to be the most obvious way to flee. For one thing, security procedures at airports are far stricter than at land borders.
One way to test a picture's integrity is to turn it upside down - a technique used not only by connoisseurs but also by artists trying to see their work with a fresh eye.
I was a war correspondent. I've watched great people crumble under pressure and make bad decisions.
What I learned is that there are indeed some stories that are too true to tell, too revealing for the general population to metabolize. And too challenging to your reporter colleagues, whose turf or toes you might have tread upon.
Sometimes, in a fictional story, you can be more honest and truthful, actually. As a journalist, you're a prisoner of the data, in effect. You have to tell the story with evidence you can verify.
When it came to 'Concussion,' I found myself with so many threads to weave. So integral to the whistle-blower's tale were spirituality, the cost of hero-worshipping, what it means to be an American, and just how dangerous the truth can be.
Tom Hanks comes with a lot of credibility.
Most editors are just worried about their jobs. They're overwhelmed. They're underpaid. They do the best they can.
'Writing' is the wrong way to describe what happens to words in a movie. First, you put down words. Then you rehearse them with actors. Then you shoot the words. Then you edit them. You cut a lot of them, you fudge them, you make up new ones in voice-over. Then you cut it and throw it all away.
I've been writing screenplays for a long time, and a lot of it came out of the journalism I was doing.
I consider myself neither liberal nor conservative when it comes to foreign policy.
There will always been the prurient rubbernecking aspect to disasters: people who just can't get enough gore.
Our brains have this habit of quilting dreams from the fabrics of our lives. As a filmmaker, I get to do it for a living.
It's very dangerous for a storyteller to walk into a situation with a political agenda because you end up telling a story about issues instead of telling a story about people.
I always spend a good deal of time with the people I write about. I try and smell the normalcy of their lives. I try to look at the normal rhythm of their life.
I did nothing at the behest of the NFL, for the NFL, against the NFL.
To me, film is the most complete method of storytelling.
My politics are very centrist and sometimes, especially when it comes to foreign affairs, lean to the right.
Once you turn on the camera, making a movie is making a movie. I don't care if it's $9 million dollars or $50 million dollars. You have bigger toys, bigger set, actors who are better paid, but once you turn on the camera, it's director and performance, and I don't find a big difference.
My personal sources in the intelligence community and the military are very good. They're excellent. I have very high-up, in-depth sources.
I wouldn't let my children play football.
What interested me was the story of Bennet Omalu. You hear his narrative: Immigrant from Nigeria, landing in Pittsburgh, only to learn and tell the truth about this most American - and sacrosanct - cultural institution: the NFL.
Like every other industry or institution, the journalism world is populated by the petty and fearful, in addition to the courageous and brilliant.