Doing a scene truthfully is very similar to doing a song truthfully. They're really parallel.
You know how in most teenage movies the girl meets the boy, they kiss, they have some type of fallout, then there's an awkward sex scene, and then they're together forever? And they say the perfect things the whole way? That doesn't happen in real life.
There's always something happening in pretty much every moment of every scene of everything I've ever worked on in longform that's not being expressed or acknowledged.
I feel like if you shoot one scene all day long or you take two days to do a scene, that scene is going to be stale.
Every scene is a challenge. There are technical challenges, but often it's the simplest challenge where you feel a sense of achievement when you pull it off.
I appreciate that I have lots of fans out there, and they want to wish me well, but I don't want that to influence how I feel throughout the day or how I act within a scene.
The scene of independent cinema is already a large scene in America, and not in a negative way, but it's cluttered. It's very populated with just American films, so the room left for foreign movies is not extremely vast. The American public also does not really read. They don't read subtitles. But we're like that in Canada, too.
I was in prison with pretty much the who's who of the jihadist and Islamist scene of Egypt at the time, and Egypt was the cradle of Islamism for the world - it's where it began and where jihadism began as well.
With screenplays, it's all about being as concise as possible. If you have a scene that's set in a bar, you just have to write, 'Interior: Bar.'
I want to be able to say, 'you think you're odd, I'm even odder and I made it - you can too!' I want to direct, do more with 'The Dance Scene,' sign artists and just provide opportunities. I'm just getting started and having the time of my life!
I want to have a scene with Maggie Smith.
I don't like to talk about things unless I have to. I don't like to talk a scene to death or overanalyze it, especially if I feel like I have some way in on my own.
I always feel the most validated and confident being around people that I find funny - having Fred Armisen laugh at a scene or Bill Hader or Seth Meyers give me a compliment.
