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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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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
Bombs
Blow
Surprise
Hitchcock
Supposed
Suspense
Rules
Blows
Becomes
Tense
Might
Bomb
Bus

More quotes by Gus Van Sant

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If it were up to the executives, they probably wouldn't have directors at all.
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The biopic also wasn't a form that I necessarily believed in, because you can never really get it right, you know? It's also a form that's very popular - the straight-ahead biopic.
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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.
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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.
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Sometimes, the people who are helping you can drop the ball.
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I'd come into filmmaking as a painter so, for me, making 'Good Will Hunting' was experimental because I didn't know how to do it.
Gus Van Sant
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I find it interesting, the different rules that apply to journalism and drama, even though journalism has become more and more about entertainment, and entertainment has become more and more about journalism.
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.
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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.
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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.
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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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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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I have this new theory about films. It's almost like astrology, where if we started on a Tuesday the film will be different than if we started on a Wednesday. Not because of the planets. It's that sometimes you start with the wrong balance and the whole thing gets messed up.
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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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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I was once a shameless, full-time dope fiend.
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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I've told people who have just started to make a film that the one thing you might experience is this feeling that everybody is conspiring against you, because you're not necessarily able to tell what's real and what's not.
Gus Van Sant
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My department is to get actors to do stuff.
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