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It's not my job. The Weinstein company, it's their job to convince people. My job was to make the movie. That's what I did. I know what we did in France was to have the maximum screenings just to let people talk about the movie and say they enjoyed the movie.

Michel Hazanavicius

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Michel Hazanavicius
Age: 57
Born: 1967
Born: March 29
Actor
Film Director
Film Editor
Film Producer
Screenwriter
Paris
France
Michel Hazanavičius
Movie
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Weinstein
Talk
Screenings
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Make
Maximum
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France
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More quotes by Michel Hazanavicius

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I think being a foreigner and talking about Hollywood allowed me to use some cliches and some references that an American would maybe not use.
Michel Hazanavicius
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The Germans were much more graphical. The expressionism is much more than cinema. It was a movement with artists, painters, music and architecture, so it's really graphic and visual. And the French were something else.
Michel Hazanavicius
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Actually, I met a lot of directors and most of them have that fantasy to make a silent movie because for directors it's the purest way to tell a story. It's about creating images that tell a story and you don't need dialogue for that.
Michel Hazanavicius
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Sometimes I think you have to try to do things that people don't think are doable. I remember at the very beginning actually, the first person I had to convince was myself really because there's a self-censorship. When everybody says 'we don't do silent movies anymore,' you agree with everybody, and you say 'yeah, you're right.' It was a fantasy.
Michel Hazanavicius
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I watched a lot of movies from all over the world. The Russians were very good at editing. They were specialists in editing. The Man with a Camera, if you know that movie, is incredible. I still don't understand how it works. It's a movie with no script, no actors and still it works. It's really good. It's really about editing.
Michel Hazanavicius
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I think there's something in common with the OSS 117 movies. The big difference is there's no irony in this one. It's not parody. I tried to make it very simple. It's a simple story, but to be simple, it's very complex in the way it's done.
Michel Hazanavicius
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I think the writer is always the creator, because he's starting with nothing, but the actor comes in and gives flesh and blood.
Michel Hazanavicius
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I watched a lot of silent directors who were absolutely great like John Ford and Fritz Lang, Tod Browning, and also some very modern directors like The Coen Brothers. The directors take the freedom within their own movies to be melodramatic or funny when they chose to be. They do whatever they want and they don't care about the genre.
Michel Hazanavicius
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I thought 'The Artist' was a perfect way to find a good balance. The artistic challenge is obvious because the film is black-and-white and its silent, but I did my best to make the movie accessible and easy to watch. I really don't want to make elitist movies. I really try hard to work for the audience. Audiences are smart. They get everything.
Michel Hazanavicius
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Hollywood is much more than America. Hollywood belongs to all of the planet.
Michel Hazanavicius
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I guess all the directors in France are influenced by Hitchcock, because he's the perfect visual director, in my eyes.
Michel Hazanavicius
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An idea is something you work on to make it work and a desire is much deeper in a way.
Michel Hazanavicius
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When you're with your wife, you don't say I love you to your wife every day but the ways you look at her and your actions are another way to communicate. Don't focus on dialogue, only focus on what you're expressing.
Michel Hazanavicius
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I want to thank three person: I want to thank Billy Wilder. I want to thank Billy Wilder. And I want to thank Billy Wilder.
Michel Hazanavicius
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This is the problem with language, and this is what makes silent movies fun, because the connection with them, me or the audience is not with the language. There's no question of interpretation of what we are saying it's just about feeling. You create your own story
Michel Hazanavicius
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I think Hollywood is cleverer than you think. I'm not sure they will do it. I don't think so, but maybe I'm wrong. When we were doing the preparation of the movie, we didn't have all the money so we were looking for all the solutions possible, and 3D was one option.
Michel Hazanavicius
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I looked at a lot of photos from Hollywood in the '20s, photographs of silent movies being filmed all over the world which are very specific and very evocative. Berenice, the lead actress, is my wife. She really followed the same path with me.
Michel Hazanavicius
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I can say is usually people are slightly confused. They think that silent movies are old. But, the fact is, they are old because they have been made in the '20s. That's the thing that makes them old. Not the format. The format is just a format. It's not an old format.
Michel Hazanavicius
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If you try to make a silent movie with a normal script and you just pull out the dialogue, you will have big problems with the actors because you will ask them to tell a story that you don't know.
Michel Hazanavicius
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I love silent cinema but don't hold it sacred. Like any branch of film there are some very boring films alongside the masterpieces.
Michel Hazanavicius