I like to say, 'You get as much story as you can take.' But you have to effectively render it.
Eventually, it came to this place like, 'I'd like to direct, but I need to find the story to tell.' 'Man of Tai Chi' became the story to tell.
You can write a short story in two hours. Two hours a day, you have a novel in a year.
I pretty much drink a cup of coffee, write in my journal for a while, and then sit at a computer in my office and torture the keys. My one saving grace as a writer is that, if I'm having trouble with the novel I'm writing, I write something else, a poem or a short story. I try to avoid writer's block by always writing something.
Moviemaking is a time machine: narrative spliced into fragments and reassembled into a constant present, the end of a story shot before the beginning, which is shot after the middle.
My only conclusion about structure is that nothing works if you don't have interesting characters and a good story to tell.
'All the Stars in the Heavens' takes place during the golden age of Hollywood, around an imagined story about Loretta Young; Clark Gable; Alda, a young woman with a secret who is preparing to become a nun but is cast out of her convent; and the scenic artist she meets on the set of 'The Call of the Wild.' It's a big, lush historical novel.
People should go see 'Premium' because it's a great story about love and the person who shaped us as the people we eventually become. There are a bunch of laughs as well as poignant thinking moments. It's a story about the human experience, and so many people can relate to it. Plus we need the money!
Whether I'm acting or making it, at the end of the day it's telling the story; action, drama. You want the audience to feel it - the story, the action, the scene, or a particular shot. I just keep working on crafting my art, on how to make action movies.
The bones of the story of 'War Horse' is a love story. That's what makes it universal.
I've been wrestling with Kafka since I was an adolescent. I think he's a great aphorist, a great letter writer, a great diarist, a great short story writer, and a great novelist - I'd put novelist last.
I came to America, and I made good. It's an old story, but it hasn't been told in a long time. Usually, it's, 'I'm an immigrant, I came here and got persecuted.' My story is I came here, I worked hard, and it worked out all right. So it's still available.
Billy Barnes signed me and got me my first role in an interracial love story filmed in Atlanta called 'Together For Days' with Clifton Davis. My mother thinks it was my best work. You cannot find a copy of it.
I just didn't want to get bored playing a character, and that's kind of the benefit of doing films; you've lived with a character for four or five months and that's it, and you walk away from that character and you feel like you told a story.
To write a story about New York that only deals with people in your age and socioeconomic bracket, that feels dishonest to me. So much of New York comes from everyone bumping into each other.
The reality is our story and the way we love and our taste in clothing and everything else. And what we ambitiously feel we can be.
'Selma' is a story about voice - the voice of a great leader; the voice of a community that triumphs despite turmoil; and the voice of a nation striving to grow into a better society. I hope the film reminds us that all voices are valuable and worthy of being heard.
When I came to the last line of 'Car Crash While Hitchhiking,' I read it as a pitiless statement of indifference: a refusal to warn the family of their impending collision, a refusal to help when miraculously spared, a refusal to act on the empathy hiding behind the story's language.
Beauty shouldn't be superficial and should come from within, and your eyes will tell the story.
A good story is a good story, whatever the medium.
After we air the call, it's gone. I always thought, 'What a waste.' That's such a powerful story, and there's no way to revisit it or share it.
I love learning about different dialects and I own all sorts of regional and time-period slang dictionaries. I often browse through relevant ones while writing a story. I also read a lot of diaries and oral histories.
A state of shock is what results when a gap opens up between events and our initial ability to explain them. When we find ourselves in that position, without a story, without our moorings, a great many people become vulnerable to authority figures telling us to fear one another and relinquish our rights for the greater good.
As a small child, I could watch anything happen and tell a story, and it was funny.
The biographical novel is a true and documented story of one human being's journey across the face of the years, transmuted from the raw material of life into the delight and purity of an authentic art form.
As Africans Americans we often think about the tragic stories associated with our lineage, but there are a lot of triumphs. Traveling helps you learn about other aspects of our history, like the story of Christ the Redeemer. It's empowering and inspiring.
I always wanted to do a Hollywood story. The thing about actors, though, is that they go through a streak of roles.
I think what makes a good action film is a story that gets you involved. Just action, by itself, is not going to work.
'Animal Kingdom' feels like a suburban Melbourne version of 'The Godfather 'to me. It's epic and Shakespearean in its story, and yet you still feel like you can reach out and touch it.
I've been interested in writing and storytelling since I learned to read, but it wasn't until I read Dylan Thomas, when I was 14, that I became interested in language itself, and saw it as more than a transparent medium for a story.
Philip's story is the most interesting in the royal family - his background is the opposite of what you'd think. Everyone has this idea that Philip is this bumbling, deliberately posh sort of man who says the wrong thing.
I've evolved in my writing to tell a more emotional story - my publisher, Random House, has urged that.
I think the greatest thing about making a documentary is your ability to just follow the story and the subject.
For everything you give an audience, you always have to take one thing away. They always have to pay for the story.
In 1991, the government unleashed the power of India and created a partnership between itself and industry. As a result, India has emerged as an economic success story, and that is a matter of pride for all of us.
I was writing fiction in my 20s but in a pretty undisciplined way - late at night, maybe, after I'd peeled myself from the walls of a nightclub and crawled home along the gutters. But I slowly became more serious and more devout in my work, and I fell seriously in love with the short story form.
