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I have my ideas of what a good documentary is, but drama is a different animal because you're arranging everything.

Gus Van Sant

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Gus Van Sant
Age: 72
Born: 1952
Born: July 24
Actor
Director
Film Director
Film Editor
Film Producer
Musician
Photographer
Screenwriter
Louisville
Kentucky
Gus Greene Van Sant Junior
Different
Good
Arranging
Documentary
Documentaries
Drama
Animal
Ideas
Everything

More quotes by Gus Van Sant

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There's a lot of films that have relatively rigid road maps because they have a script and others that are less rigid because they have less of a script, like 'Elephant.' The road map becomes more interpretive, maybe, than one with a detailed script. Editing-wise, they all have their problems.
Gus Van Sant
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I'm normally drawn to something I haven't done and seen before.
Gus Van Sant
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In rare cases, I've had music before I shot the movie. I think that for 'Good Will Hunting' I had an Elliot Smith record or a couple of them and I just somehow felt like the sound had something to it that reminded me of the story. So in that case there was music beforehand.
Gus Van Sant
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Apparently there’s this kind of songbird that thinks it dies every time the sun goes down. In the morning, when it wakes up, it’s totally shocked to still be alive—so it sings this really beautiful song.
Gus Van Sant
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The things that inform student culture are created and controlled by the unseen culture, the sociological aspects of our climbing culture, our 'me' generation, our yuppie culture, our SUVs, or, you know, shopping culture, our war culture.
Gus Van Sant
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The artist himself is actually the subject in everything after, say, 1900. Eventually, art becomes so removed from the community that you have to know about the artist before you can even look at the painting, because there is a conceptual idea going on.
Gus Van Sant
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Usually when I read something, first of all I'm looking for the story and then when I reread it, I'm sort of checking every part of it to see if every scene is necessary.
Gus Van Sant
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I'm usually trying to react to what the actors are coming up with. And then the environment, and then the story.
Gus Van Sant
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Narcotics have been systematically scapegoated and demonized. The idea that anyone can use drugs and escape a horrible fate is ananathema to these idiots. I predict that in the near future, right wingers will use drug hysteria as a pretext to set up an international police apparatus.
Gus Van Sant
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If you don't have the story and the unfolding of the trajectory of the saga, it's like getting in a car and not having any gas.
Gus Van Sant
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There is a way that a younger person can accept the inevitable problem that they're going to die, whereas somebody a little bit older might be overcome.
Gus Van Sant
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Even if you try to copy a film shot by shot, you still can't. It's still your own film.
Gus Van Sant
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When I was 14, I felt very rundown I had a home to go to, but I felt like I was 60 or something, older than I feel now. And I don't know if it's something that happens at 14, or whether it was adolescence or whether I was gay, or closeted gay, or whatever it was, I felt that.
Gus Van Sant
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Well, I want to do everything in sort of a documentary style, ever since I started in the '80s.
Gus Van Sant
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Modern-day cinema takes the form of a sermon. You don't get to think, you only get to receive information.
Gus Van Sant
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The rules of suspense are that you do know, and you just don't know when. In the Hitchcock rules of suspense, you are supposed to know that there is a bomb on the bus that might blow up, and then it becomes very tense - but if you don't know that there's a bomb and it just blows up, then it's just a surprise.
Gus Van Sant
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A lot of times, you're not necessarily off the page because you haven't been able to take the time to prepare a character. It's very easy to find even great actors reading it more like a reading. Things aren't really coming alive yet, even though you know they will.
Gus Van Sant
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I knew about Heatmiser, and I saw them one time at Pine Street [later changed to La Luna], which was the center of a lot of alternative bands during the 80s. But I didn't really know too much about their music.
Gus Van Sant
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I'm not being analytical. I just create everything intuitively. If you're too analytical, what you're doing probably ends up being too specific.
Gus Van Sant
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For all the boredom the straight life brings, it's not too bad.
Gus Van Sant