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Some Of Us Are Interested In Directors, But Really The Vast Majority Of Us Are Interested In Actors. You Experience The Films Through The Actors, So They're All Locked Into Your Imagination In Some Kind Of Layer Of Fantasy Or Hatred Or Wherever They Settle Into Your Imagination.

-Danny Boyle

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Some Of Us Are

Danny Boyle

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Some Of Us Are Interested In Directors, But Really The Vast Majority Of Us Are Interested In Actors. You Experience The Films Through The Actors, So They're All Locked Into Your Imagination In Some Kind Of Layer Of Fantasy Or Hatred Or Wherever They Settle Into Your Imagination.

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Will To Survive

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Basically, Actors Arrive In A Bubble. They Have A Little Sealed Bubble Around Them And It's Basically [comprised Of] Their Agents, Their Last Film, Their Next Film, Their Press Agent, And Their Per Diems - All These Things, They Cocoon Themselves With And You Have To Puncture That Bubble On Each Of Them To Make Them Be In Your Film.

I Like Action Movies, Even Though I Think Action Movies Are Kind Of Derided Now. But There Is Something Extraordinary About Action Movies, Which Is Absolutely Linked To The Invention Of Cinema And What Cinema Is And Why We Love It.

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Celluloid Will Be The Next Decade's Black And White.

Black And White

I Always Think, When There's Stuff That People Don't Like, I Always Say That If I Have Another Success, I'll Enjoy It More, But You Don't Really.

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Come A Crisis, We Want Other People.

Clearly, You Can Think Back And See That A Character Has Had Enormous Odds Stacked Against Him And Has To Overcome Them. It's Usually A Guy, I'm Afraid. But Then You're Setting Up A New Movie You Have Amnesia About These Meetings, When You've Discussed It More Analytically.

I Find It Difficult Enough Being Called "mr. Boyle," Which As I Age I'm Increasingly Called.

The Most Extraordinary Thing, You'd Be Given Permission For, And Then The Weirdest, Simplest Things, You Just Wouldn't Be Able To Obtain Permissions. And It Would Go On And On And On Forever And Ever, And There Was No Way To Know. You Have To Kind Of Approach It With An Open, Quite Optimistic Mind, No Matter What's Thrown At You, Because It Will Only Ever Result In Damaging The Film If You Let Any Kind Of Despondency Get To You.

I Was Brought Up A Very Strict Catholic And I Don't Practice Anymore Or Anything.

You Can't Tell Someone They Are Wrong About Their Own Life.

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When You're In Zero Gravity Everything Moves At The Same Speed And Nothing Stops It. If You Throw Something It Travels Forever But It Still Travels At The Speed You Threw It At. To Make It Plausible, Movies Have Chosen To Show It In Slow Motion.

You Live Your Life And It Ends Quite Quickly And All You Can Do With It Is Pass It On Decently To Someone Else. Whether Directly Or Indirectly, Behave Decently To Other People.

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It's A Nice Way To Put The Focus Back On This Simple Act... If Someone Creates You.

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I Trained In The Theatre.

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I'd Love To Do A Modern-day Musical That's Full Of Original Music. To Get Your Contemporaries To Sing And Dance Without Looking Foolish And For It To Be Transformational And Magical And All Those Things A Musical Is Supposed To Be.

Directing Is A Mixture Of Compromise And Perfectionism. When You Lose The Judgment Of Which Is More Important At Any Particular Moment, You're Time Is Over. They Find You Out And Send You Packing.

The Most Important Thing About Olympics, Of Course, Is The Games And Not The Opening Ceremony. It's Weird The Way It Gets Inverted Sometimes.

Opening Ceremony

I've Always Wanted To Do A Space Movie.

If You Have To Be Persuaded About Something, You Shouldn't Do It.

I'm Not A 'star Wars' Geek.

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My Dad Was A Labourer And My Mum Had Exactly The Same Job As Noel Gallagher's Mum - She Was A Dinner Lady At Our Local School. Everyone Comes Over From Ireland And They Get The Same Jobs.

I Find That People Find A Way Out Of Misery Through Humor And It's Humor That's Often Unacceptable To People Who Are Not In Quite Such A State Of Misery.

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Film Industry Is A Pretty Brutal Business. If You Fall Too Far Behind, All Of The Perfectionism In The World Won't Save You.

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I Don't Want To Make Pompous, Serious Films.

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I've Sort Of Escaped My Background, As People Often Do, Through Art And Culture.

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If I Am Acting Out In Any Particular Way That Is Harmful To Myself - Without A Shadow Of Doubt, There Is A Feeling Suppressed Under Wanting That Second Candy Bar. Often, It Is That Little Voice I Haven't Paid Attention To. It's Generally Not The Adult Voice. If I Take A Moment To Address That And Figure Out What That Is, The Desire For The Candy Bar Seems To Dissipate.

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I Say To First Time Filmmakers That When They're Asked, They Should Go To America As You're Far More Likely To Get A Chance.

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I Always Felt It Is Not Good If You Feel Like You Would Know How To Do Something. I've Made Mistakes Of Telling People: I Know How To Do This. And It Should Feel Dangerous. That Is The Only Way To Stay Alert, To Keep The Adrenaline Running.

I Haven't Got Anything Against Films That Are About The Minutia Of Relationships Or Customs, But I Love Extremes. I Love Taking A Bunch Of Characters And It Usually Is A Bunch Of Characters, And You Throw Something At Them That's Usually Extreme, Like A Bag Of Money, Or You Send Them Out To Explode A Nuclear Device On The Surface Of The Sun. And Those Extremes Are Wonderful For Drama.

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I Love That Sense Of Change That You'd Get In Pop Music Every Three Minutes, Every Four Minutes.

I Tend To Score With Songs From Western Pop Music.

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Extraordinary Things

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People Say You Never Remember Anybody Who Dies In Movies, And It's True, You Don't. You Don't Even Remember People Who Disappear. Although The Moment That It Happens Might Be Terribly Sad And Moving, Five Minutes Later, If You're Asked To Remember That Person, You Go, "oh Right, Yeah, Yeah!" 'cause You're Just Moving Forward.

Good Storytelling For Me Is Not So Much Technical Expertise, Which I Know Is Applauded Often; It's Actually Freshness Of Approach. It Does Mean You Sometimes Stumble And Fall And Make A Horrible Mess Of Things In Seeking That Freshness, But You Should Always Keep Trying To Do That.

But Interestingly Star City's Technology Is All 1970s - Still. In Fact, It's Alarming Because You Think, "you're Not Going To Send Someone Up Into Space In Something That Old, Are You?" But It Works And It Always Has Worked And It Doesn't Fail And It's Incredibly Reliable.

I Love Huge Movies. Not Sure I Am The Guy To Make Them, But You Can Rely On Me Being There Watching Them.

Even Though One Of Them Is About An Edinburgh Junkie And Ones A Little Boy Of Eight In Manchester, You Want Them To Always Portray Their World In Such A Vivid Way That The Audience Can Disappear Inside The Story.

If I Was Single And Did Not Have Kids, I Wonder Whether If I Would Try As Hard To Be Patient, To Mind How I React To Situations. Not Saying People Who Do Not Have Children Don't, But In My Life And How I Fight Against Doing The Things That Have Positive Impact In My Life...i Think I Would Find It Easier Not To Practice The Principles Did I Not Have Children.

I Dont See Much Difference Between It And The Other Films Though I Can See On A Rational And Intelligent Level There Is A Big Difference.

I'm A Big Sports Fan. Football. Cricket.

Theres A Certain Truth That You Do End Up Making The Same Film Again And Again So If You Vary The Genre You Have A Chance Of Breaking That Cycle.

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Everybody Expects You To Be Qualified To Talk About Your Films, But In A Way, You're The Least Qualified Person To Talk About Them. When You're Finished, You Don't Watch Them At All.

Events In The Present Can Trigger Quite A Young Part Of Ourselves. If We Don't Take Responsibility And Start Looking After That Young Part Of Ourselves, We Can Start Asking Partners To Look After That Part Of Ourselves Or We Wound Ourselves.

I Want People To Leave The Cinema Feeling That Something's Been Confirmed For Them About Life.

We're Trying To Learn From [olympic] Beijing, Which Could Be Very Intimidating. We've Learned To Expect It's Power, It Majesty And That It Completes A Cycle Of Certain Types Of Shows... I Don't Think Any Nation Could Do Anything On That Scale. We Haven't Got That Money, And I Don't Think Anybody Would Have The Appetite For That Kind Of Expenditure And That Kind Of Control, So We're Going To Try And Do Something A Bit More Intimate And Try And Start Again... Start A New Cycle For These Kind Of Ceremonies.

I Love Watching The Bond Movies Obviously And I Grew Up Reading The Books As A Kid. I've Always Loved Them Because Of That.

Its Easy To Like The Most Popular Films, But I Have A Great Fondness For A Life Less Ordinary.

We Want To See Drama Told In A Cathartic Way, With Power, With Emotion Where You Empathize And Then You're Frightened. All Those Feelings Charge Up In You And You Feel For The Story.

I Don't Want To Make Pompous, Serious Films; I Like Films That Have A Kind Of Vivacity About Them.

Actors Are Steeped In A World Of Agents And Where The Next Job Is Coming From And What Are Their Expenses And What Is The Hotel Like. You Want To Take Them Out Of That World And Dump Them Into Another World, So That When You Meet Them On The Screen They Don't Seem Like The Guy Who Was In Two Others Movies That Year.

You Use Elements Of Noir, But You Don't Want It To Be Too Noir-ish. You Don't Want It To Be Advertised As Though You're Asking People To Go And Watch An Updated Noir. I Don't Think They'll Go Do That. They Want To See A Modern Story.

I Learned With 'the Beach' That I'm A Bit Better Lower Down The Radar.

To Create The Reality Of Space With This Sense Of Suspension: Nothing's Happening, It's Endless; We're Traveling At 28,000 Kilometers An Hour But Nothing's Happening. Nothing! And You Have To Do That! There Are All These Rules You Have To Follow, I've Never Known Anything Like It.

Normally, I'm A Very Controlling Director. Directors Are Controlling. It's Part Of The Job, But There's Various Degrees Of It And The Constructs I Normally Work On Are Very Controlling Constructs.

Both Of My Sisters Have Been Teachers And They Used To Say You Get Asked Between 300 And 600 Questions Every Day Which You Have To Answer. That's Exactly What Directing Is. And The Vast Majority Of Those Questions Are Not Very Interesting Really, But They Need Somebody To Make A Decision - A Good One Or A Bad One - And They Follow It.

That Survival Instinct, That Will To Live, That Need To Get Back To Life Again, Is More Powerful Than Any Consideration Of Taste, Decency, Politeness, Manners, Civility. Anything. It's Such A Powerful Force.

Originally I'm A Big Pop-music Aficionado, That's My Love.

I Mean Suspense, Twists Are Almost Impossible These Days.

Movies Are About Time. You Can Take That Momentum And Manipulate Time As Well, Or You Can Deliberately Slow It Down, Stop It, And Start It Again. There Is No Other Art Form That Does That Type Of Manipulation In That Way.

Actors Want To Impress At The Beginning, So You Take Advantage Of That By Suddenly Saying, 'right, You're Here For Two Weeks.' What You're Doing Is Creating A Siege Mentality.

Always Changing Genres, Making Very Different Films Is A Good Idea. It's A Way Of Making Yourself Feel Vulnerable Again, Getting Back To That Innocence. As Is Working Within A Circumspect Budget.

To Force Yourself Out Of The Comfort Zone, The Main Ingredient Is Trying To Work In A World Where You Haven't Been Before, That You Don't Know The Rules Of. And That Involves A Lot Of Research, So You Begin To See Where The Other People Have Been, But You Are Starting From As Vulnerable And As Low A Point As Possible.

If You Take A Loud Pride In Anything, People Will Rightly Shoot You Down.

When You Have Children Your Own Hypocrisy Becomes More Apparent Because You're Telling Them How To Behave, And You're Not Behaving Like That Yourself. So It Obliges One To Really Go In And Try To Look At Why There Is A Huge Gulf Between How One Knows One Wants To Behave And How One Actually Does Behave.

Some Of Us Are Interested In Directors, But Really The Vast Majority Of Us Are Interested In Actors. You Experience The Films Through The Actors, So They're All Locked Into Your Imagination In Some Kind Of Layer Of Fantasy Or Hatred Or Wherever They Settle Into Your Imagination.

I Grew Up In A City, I'm A City Person - I Go On Holiday And I'm Bored.

I Think Women Assess Time Passage Much Better Than Men - Because Of Their Biological Clocks - And They Are Much More Realistic About Measuring Out Time, Whereas Men Tend To Hang Onto Things. Women Acknowledge The Biology Of Their Time, And Dance Through The Beat Of That Drum...whereas Men Just Drum.

There Are Three Huge, Titanic, Space Movies Which If You Ever Make A Film [about Space] You Cannot Avoid. You May Want To Avoid Them But You Cannot. I've Never Known A Genre Like It Where You Are Dictated To By These Films, 2001, Alien, And Tarkovsky's Solaris.

I Have A Philosophy, A Belief, Which I Can See In Many, Many Other Directors That Your Early Work Is Your Best Work, Because You Don't Know What You're Doing.

The Sun Is The Most Important Thing In Everybody's Life, Whether You're A Plant, An Animal Or A Fish, And We Take It For Granted.

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