Quote

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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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
First
Usually
Every
Sort
Something
Looking
Story
Read
Reread
Stories
Checking
Part
Necessary
Firsts
Scene

More quotes by 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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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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I mean, I think I'm pretty sentimental.
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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.
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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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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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Yeah, I try to be really calm.
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 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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Digital information, for every type of storage, is unfounded. If everything is on a hard drive and the hard drive freezes up, your whole photography collection could just go away. We can still look at printed photographs of our grandparents. We can physically hold them in our hands and look at it.
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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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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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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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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When I grew up in the '60s, we were actually dominated by this, you know, sort of conforming '50s culture, even though we were like trying to express our own culture, like, the dominant culture was the thing that was forming us. And I think that that's true today.
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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If it were up to the executives, they probably wouldn't have directors at all.
Gus Van Sant
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I think over the course of 14 films, I'm returning to a place that I know to tell a story... the same way Spielberg returned to fantasy, Lucas returned to the 'Star Wars' saga, or John Ford returned to the western.
Gus Van Sant
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Everything's changing so fast that it's sometimes hard to keep up.
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