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Wong Kar-Wai is a really great inspiration. He's always referred to as the Jimi Hendrix of filmmaking.

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
Wong
Jimi
Hendrix
Referred
Inspiration
Great
Really
Always

More quotes by 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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If it were up to the executives, they probably wouldn't have directors at all.
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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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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My department is to get actors to do stuff.
Gus Van Sant
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You're following your track, the story, your only plan, your map for the audience, and all the other stuff is, like, the fun stuff: the costumes, the locations, the set-dressing and the actors. They can all be variable as you like if you stick - however roughly - to the path.
Gus Van Sant
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For all the boredom the straight life brings, it's not too bad.
Gus Van Sant
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If Im diagnosed with cancer I might become despondent, but someone young might not, and they might need connections with somebody outside their circle of family because their family is so despondent.
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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There is a common theme, though, in the stories I have told, which are usually associations of characters or families that are formed outside of a family circle.
Gus Van Sant
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I've always been attracted to temporary families.
Gus Van Sant
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I mean, I think I'm pretty sentimental.
Gus Van Sant
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In high school, I read 'Silas Marner' and I was very attracted to this character - he was very rundown and he'd just stop, and things would happen around him.
Gus Van Sant
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I used to take photographs just to remember people.
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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And Later I Thought, I Can't Think How Anyone Can Become a Director Without Learning the Craft of Cinematography.
Gus Van Sant
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I'm going in a really weird I-don't-know-where direction, but I prefer anything [different] from how standardized filmmaking has become.
Gus Van Sant
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Yeah, Kubrick's a big influence. In something like 'A Clockwork Orange,' he is trying to use the practical light - I mean, at least he says that in his interviews, like they're not using traditionally Hollywood lights. In 'Elephant' we basically used no lights we never really adjusted.
Gus Van Sant
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Free time keeps me going. It's just something that's always been a part of my life. I was originally a painter, and I made films sort of as an extension of that, and then I started to try to make dramatic films because the early films were experimental films.
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