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I knew my affection for the Philippines was equally as telling: a democracy on paper, apparently well ordered, regularly subverted by irrational chaos. A place where I'd felt instantly at home.

Alex Garland

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Alex Garland
Age: 54
Born: 1970
Born: May 26
Film Director
Film Producer
Novelist
Screenwriter
Writer
London
England
Alexander Medawar Garland
Home
Affection
Subverted
Wells
Chaos
Philippines
Well
Telling
Ordered
Paper
Regularly
Democracy
Instantly
Knew
Apparently
Felt
Irrational
Place
Equally

More quotes by Alex Garland

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Of course witnessing poverty was the first to be ticked off the list. Then I had to graduate to the more obscure stuff. Being in a riot was something I pursued with a truly obsessive zeal, along with being tear-gassed and hearing gunshots fired in anger.
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Escape through travel works. Almost from the moment I boarded my flight, life in England became meaningless. Seat-belt signs lit up, problems switched off. Broken armrests took precedence over broken hearts. By the time the plane was airborne I'd forgotten England even existed.
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I've written original material before, where I've come up with the idea and the characters myself, and that's definitely very different to working with someone else's characters and stories.
Alex Garland
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The key relationship for writers in film is producers, because those are the first two people involved and the ones who work on it intensely in a private way without the big machinery of film.
Alex Garland
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I've never been to Comic-Con, but I'm certainly aware from this side of the Atlantic that it's a very important part of film marketing now, even when the films are not directly linked to a comic.
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There's one massive problem with coming from writing novels into screenplays that I've discovered over the years, which is that you've got too much facility on the page. In novels, you can persuade people of things that work that don't really work.
Alex Garland
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Though I walk through the valley of death I will fear no evil, for I am the evilest motherfucker in the valley
Alex Garland
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You fish, swim, eat, laze around, and everyone's so friendly. It's such simple stuff, but... If i could stop the world and restart life, put the clock back, i think I'd restart it like this. For everyone.
Alex Garland
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I used to think about video games, This is clearly an amazing, new narrative medium, and it's going to be mind-blowing when people get to grips with what's possible within this medium. It took us a century to get really good at film. Video games are at a much earlier stage.
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The truth is, I hadn't grown up really wanting to be a writer. The whole thing was a weird aberration in some ways, and I didn't feel personally connected to the level of success I had with it - the success of sorts, I guess.
Alex Garland
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The first I heard of the beach was in Bangkok, on the Ko Sanh Road.
Alex Garland
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The thing about tourism is just that it's incredibly powerful. It's like a gun and it's incredibly easy to be irresponsible with it. And the speed of the impact that tourism can have on a place can be quite breathtaking. It doesn't take years, it takes months. That's how quickly it works. And it can be quite a bleak thing to witness.
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I think everything I write is from an atheist perspective. I mean, it's partly from an atheist perspective because I'm an atheist, and I'm just not really interested in religious-based questions.
Alex Garland
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I can kid people, including myself, into believing that something on the page will work. But when you film it, you just think, Oh ....
Alex Garland
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Tourists went on holidays while travellers did something else. They travelled.
Alex Garland
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Uh... what can I say? Made money. Given a launch pad for a working life. Set a precedent I had no interest in following. Created expectations that I was not cut-out to match. Disappointed virtually all of my readers subsequently. But I like what I've done, and I stand by it all.
Alex Garland
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I did keep a travel diary once and it was a big mistake. All I remember of that trip is what I bothered to write down.
Alex Garland
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By the time the plane was airborne I'd forgotten England even existed.
Alex Garland
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Vietnam, me love you long time. All day, all night, me love you long time. (...) Dropping acid on the Mekong Delta, smoking grass through a rifle barrel, flying on a helicopter with opera blasting out of loudspeakers, tracer-fire and paddy-field scenery, the smell of napalm in the morning. Long time.
Alex Garland
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Normally, small talk is enough for me to form an opinion of someone. I make quick judgments, often completely wrong, and then stick by them rigidly.
Alex Garland