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To me, sadness and humor aren't disrelated and humor is the best tool I've had against the sadness in my life.

Mike Mills

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Mike Mills
Age: 65
Born: 1958
Born: December 17
Bassist
Composer
Guitarist
Keyboardist
Musician
Pianist
Record Producer
Songwriter
County of Orange
California
Michael Edward Mills
Michael Mills
Ophelia
Aren
Humor
Best
Life
Tool
Sadness
Tools

More quotes by Mike Mills

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Life is too short for a half-rack.
Mike Mills
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OK, so my parents were married in 1955 and my mom knew my dad was gay and my dad knew he was gay and so I was, like, 'Why in the heck did you get married?' Like, what was going on? What was that time? It's like this crazy paradox that my whole life is based on, or my family's based on. So I spent a lot of time trying to understand '55.
Mike Mills
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Over and over again, I'm trying to express or communicate these big and small struggles to the world, and really to myself.
Mike Mills
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There is a drunkenness to grief, which is good.
Mike Mills
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I pretty much believe that a film is a film and when an audience watches a film, they finish it.
Mike Mills
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I would hate to think I'm promoting sadness as an aesthetic. But I grew up in not just a family but a town and a culture where sadness is something you're taught to feel shame about. You end up chronically desiring what can be a very sentimental idea of love and connection. A lot of my work has been about trying to make a space for sadness.
Mike Mills
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The oldest sibling always knows things that the younger ones don't.
Mike Mills
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Being a good Hans Haacke student, part of his influence on me is that there's no difference between a gallery show and a film - or even an ad and a T-shirt-in terms of cultural legitimacy. They're just different contexts in which to have some sort of communication.
Mike Mills
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There's some movies I watch, they're kind of like my anti-anxiety pill, my anti-depressant pill. I watch them at least once or twice a month probably. And I never stop learning from them as a filmmaker.
Mike Mills
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I'm not a craftsman of graphics or art or film. I'm more of an idea generator and manufacturer.
Mike Mills
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No one leaves the edit room thinking, 'Yeah, I nailed that one!' Everyone I know goes into their first premiere or their first screening thinking, 'I screwed up so bad. I'm sorry, I messed up.' It's just a real common feeling.
Mike Mills
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We never did things as we were supposed to do. That was part of our ethic. We did what felt right to us, not what someone told us we should do.
Mike Mills
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I don't really believe that documentary is objective reality and fiction is all illusion.
Mike Mills
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If you ask me, the place that a story happens is as equal character. It's almost like an ecological viewpoint: These people are living in this piece of land, and in this piece of land in this time this is possible. For me, I almost think location first. It's time first - what year is it - then where are we, and then who is in it.
Mike Mills
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It's funny now how much we look at - whatever you want to call it: art, design, culture stuff, film - online, and how in the online world, you're instantly global.
Mike Mills
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My graffiti really comes more from a May '68, sort of Situationist vibe than the hip-hop world. I think a real graffiti artist would find me a poser.
Mike Mills
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The littlest thing can have the strongest connection when you're grieving. Your Proustian, poetic nerve is turned up to ten.
Mike Mills
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To me it's like, every time I'm a director, like today, you're the captain of the ship, so you better dress like it. You're the host of the party.
Mike Mills
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Film is endlessly just beyond your reach. I think that's what I love so much about it.
Mike Mills
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L.A. is so isolated and unhip in a way it gives you room to figure out who you are and explore more personal stuff.
Mike Mills