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The Idea That Competition Is Pointless Is Really Something That Speaks To Me, Especially In America Where Competition Is Really Prominent And Very Overwhelming, And It Doesn't Bring The Best Out In You Because What's Going To Push You Is To Bring Others Down.

-Michel Gondry

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The Idea That Competition

Michel Gondry

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The Idea That Competition Is Pointless Is Really Something That Speaks To Me, Especially In America Where Competition Is Really Prominent And Very Overwhelming, And It Doesn't Bring The Best Out In You Because What's Going To Push You Is To Bring Others Down.

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And I'm Not A Micromanagement Guy. I Prefer To Spend My Time Doing Other Stuff Than That.

When I Shoot Actors, I Have That Dilemma. I Want The Actor To Be Good, And Sometimes I Have To Push Them To A Place That Isn't Pleasant. I Always Think: 'is It Worth Doing For The Sake Of The Movie?' But I Have To Remember The Bigger Picture.

I Was Sort Of Lazy At School, But I Realize I Still Have Something To Bring To The Subject Which Is Comforting. I Feel I Am Not As Stupid As I Thought I Was.

The Idea That Competition Is Pointless Is Really Something That Speaks To Me, Especially In America Where Competition Is Really Prominent And Very Overwhelming, And It Doesn't Bring The Best Out In You Because What's Going To Push You Is To Bring Others Down.

I Don't Want To Compare Myself To Him - I Don't Want People To See Me As This Great Genius - But When I See Charlie Chaplin's Movies There Is A Combination Of Drama, Naivety And Social Meaning That I Can See In Myself, At A Different Level.

You Don't Watch Home Movie For The Technique, You Watch Because It's Reminiscing On Good Moments You Spent With Your Friends. It Reflects You. It Belongs To You. So I Was Thinking People Could, Instead Of Spending Their Money To Go And See A Blockbuster, Make Their Own Movies. Collect The Money And Make A New One Every Week. I Thought It Would Be Nice To Create A World That Makes This Construct Possible.

I Think Always My Interest In Making Movies Is To Have Something Really Technical Mixed With Something That Was Not So Formal...something Free.

I Don't Mock Things, Which Makes Me More Vulnerable To Mockery Myself. If You're Cynical, You're Protected From Mockery. But I Have To Be Nice. I Don't Think I Have Irony. A Sense Of Humour, Yes, But Not Irony.

There Is An Amount Of Abstraction In My Movies, And Sometimes They Don't Really Understand It Until The Film Is Finished.

I'm Not Judging The Films. People Make These Connections Through A Film, Or Because They Know Them. But The Fact That They Erase Them And Have To Start From Scratch, I Think That's An Important Point. A Lot Of Kids, When They Have A Camera, Have Tended To Do Remakes Of Existing Films. You Have A Lot Of Kids That Make Star Wars. And I Think That's Creativity, But Not As Much Creativity As Starting From Scratch.

I Think It's A Problem When Journalists Have The Title Of Their Article Before They Do The Interview, Because It Biases The Way They Conduct It.

The Competition Is Not Really Friendly Or Peaceful. It Leads To Oppression In Some Ways.

I Find, Surprisingly, That Actors Are Liberated In Their Work If There's Stuff Going On Around Them, Because They Can't Think Too Much About Who They're Supposed To Be.

The Problem Is When You Get Forced To Use Ideas That Aren't Good. When I Can Filter The Ideas And Use The Best Of Them, I Am Happy To Collaborate.

I'm Attracted To Working With Comedians Because They Don't Have That Stars' Idea Of What A Hero Should Be. The Downside Is They're Always Addressing The Camera Too Much.

I'm Going To Work With Dan Clowes. After Charlie Kaufman, It's Hard To Fill Up The Gap. It's Hard To Find Somebody Who... A Lot Of Writers, I Can Clearly See The Desire Of Succeeding Before The Desire Of Expressing Themselves. Sometimes People Get Upset When You Want To Be Different. You Were Talking About "whimsical," Which Is A Nice Word. But Sometimes They Use The Word "quirky" In The Pejorative Sense. I Get Frustrated, Because They Feel Like I'm Doing Whatever I Want, And There Is No Ground, And I Don't Really Care. They Feel It's Cynical. But I Don't Think I Have Any Cynicism In Me.

My Goal Was To Show That Even If People Work In A Garage Or A Supermarket, They Have Very Funny Things To Say. We Never Hear Their Voices.

The First Dolly Track Was Somebody Who Had The Idea To Put The Camera On A Boat On A Canal. So The Boat Would Move Very Slowly But Steadily. So They Would See All That Surrounds You And You'd See The Landscape Changing Slowly. So That Was The First Time.

I Would Define Myself As Being Naive And Perverse At The Same Time. And I Think That If That Is Consistent It Will Make The Tone Consistent.

I Don't Like Those Shows Where People Get Eliminated Every Week, And Then They Have To Get Meaner To Survive.

I Think My Imagination Dictates The Technologies I Use. But At The Same Time, My Imagination Can Be Technologic. Sometimes I See A Tool And I Know Immediately How To Use It, But Most Of The Time I Use The Tool For An Idea I Already Have.

Objectivity Is Very Hard To Achieve. It Needs Some Research And Patience. If You Want To Do Something Honest, You Have To Explore It A Little Longer.

People Who Get To Express Their Voice Are Paid By The People Who Make Profit From It. So They're Going To Make You Believe You Have To Spend Your Money Buying These Products Otherwise You Won't Be Happy. This Is Really Wrong. Especially The Implication It Carries.

When I Was Young, I Would Stay In My Backyard And I Would Create Roads And Tunnels And Systems. My Uncle Had A Sawmill, And We Had All Sorts Of Pieces Of Wood, And We'd Create A City. I Truly Believe That Kids Enjoy The Box Better Than The Car Or The Toy That's Inside. So Many Times During Christmas, Watching A Kid, Or Even Myself... There Is Excitement Toward Your Toy, But Then You Put The Toy On The Side And Something Is Created With The Package.

The Problem Is, With A Lot Of Children's Films, They Are Very Commercial.

I Don't Like To Put People In A Competition To Defeat The Other.

I Think Animation Is A Very Truthful Way To Express Your Thoughts, Because The Process Is Very Direct. That's What I've Always Liked About Animation, Particularly Abstract Animation. You Go From The Idea To Execution, Straight From Your Brain. It's Like When You Hear Someone Playing An Instrument, And You Feel The Direct Connection Between The Instrument And His Brain, Because The Instrument Becomes An Extension Of His Arms And Fingers. It's Like A Scanner Of The Brain And Thought Process That You Can Watch, Or Hear.

In The '90s Movies Were So Serious, And So Stylistic And Slick That I Could Not Identify With Them.

I Hate Cynicism. I Wipe It From Me. I Don't Like Cynical People. I Don't Like Cynical Movies. Cynicism Is Very Easy. You Don't Have To Justify It. You Don't Have To Fight For It.

The Problem When You Edit A Film Together, When You Shoot A Film, You Are Drawn Into The Moment. You Want Each Moment To Be Special And Full Of Life.

I Like Actors Who Don't Have To Think Too Hard About What They Have To Do To Achieve Their Performance.

Of Course, From Time To Time, I Want To Do Everything Myself And Be More Involved On My Own With The Creative Process. But I Don't Mind The Collaboration At All.

I Like Actors Who Just Are Who They Are, With A Little Bit Of Qualification To Adapt To Their Character. But Mostly They Just Use Their Own Personality To Embody The Character.

Every Great Idea Is On The Verge Of Being Stupid.

In A Way, Putting Actors Deep Into This Sort Of Complicated Universe Frees Them From Thinking About Who They Should Be. They Just Are Somebody.

I Have A Video Store Next To My Apartment In Paris, And They Still Have Most Of Their Videos On Vhs. A Lot Of People Think Be Kind Rewind Is Set In The Past Because They Just Wipe This Reality Out Of Their Head, But It Is True That There Are A Lot Of Movies That Don't Exist On Dvd. But I'm Not Like A Big Movie Buff.

I Always Wanted To Create This Community That Would Come And Tell Their Own Story, Shoot It - And Watch Them. The Idea Is To Not Have One Entity Who Creates The Work, The Project, And Another Entity Who Consumes It; The Idea Is People Create Their Own Work, Like Somebody Cultivating His Garden.

I Think Some People Feel That If You Are Going To Have 3d, Then You Have To Shoot In 3d, But They Shoot 3d, So Of Course They're Going To Say 'my Way Of Doing A Film Is Better.' I'm Not Telling Anyone How They Should Do Their Film, So Why Should Anyone Tell Me How I Should Do Mine?

Perhaps My Favourite Story Is 'le Passe-muraille' By Marcel Ayme. It's About A Guy Who Wakes Up With A Weird Faculty That Means He Can Walk Through Walls. He's A Very Shy Clerk, And He Uses It To Get Revenge, Or Vent His Frustration.

All These Gadgets, The Phone And The Computer, They Expose The Inside Of Your Brain In A Way That's Bad.

I've Always Loved 3d. In Fact, As A Kid, I Was Exposed To 3d At An Early Age Because My Grandfather Was A Specialist Of 3d In Cinematheques. And Then My Cousin Put It In 'science Of Sleep' With Toilet Paper Tube Cities. But He Was A Specialist And I Always Wanted To Do Something In 3d.

I Don't Like The Idea Of Competition - Maybe Because I Kept Losing Them When I Was A Kid. Maybe It's Better To Be The One Who Loses?

I'm Always Excited To Work With Actors.

I'm Just Thinking Of 2001, Which I Think Is The Most Expensive Independent Film Ever Made - Which Is Great, Someday I Hope I Will Do One. But I Know The Parameters When I Got Onto This Project - I Have To Take Care Of Everyone, Make Sure That They Are All On Board, And This Process Interests Me.

I Learned To Drive When I Was 35. I'm Driving Like An Old Lady And Very Close To The Wheel. I Don't Take Many Risks, And When People Yell At Me I Say 'sorry, Sorry, Sorry!' I Don't Have Road Rage Yet.

I Want To Explore New Ideas And Put Myself In A Place Where I Can Finish A Project That Is More Unusual Or That Doesn't Seem Doable.

It's A Very American Thing That Everything Has To Be A Business. Americans Think... I Like America, Or I Would Not Be Here. There Are Great Qualities To This Country. But This Sense That Everything Has To Be A Business Is Sometimes Overwhelming.

I Love 3d A Lot, I Have A Great Interest In 3d, So If I Am Given The Tools To Do A Project With 3d, It's A Dream For Me.

People Always Say There Is Competition In Nature, But I Think That Because We Are Human, It's Not Only Competition. Because We Are Human We Have Something Other Than Competition - Sharing, Helping Others, Or Being Oneself. Competition Is Really Kind Of Ugly.

I Don't Like Movies That Are Too Manipulative. A Lot Of Movies Thrive On Really Pushing Your Buttons And Making You Hate The Villain.

That's What The Internet Is: It's Like Bombarding Your Eyeballs With These Myriad Blinking Colour Lights. It's Like Trying To Watch A Movie On Your Phone In The Middle Of Times Square.

You Cannot Do Everything You Want With The 3d Camera, It's Too Big, And The Digital Quality Of Those Cameras Is A Little Bit Limiting. With Film, You Have A Lot More Subtly, Like With Highlights And Color. In Terms Of Sharpness They (both Formats) Are Very Close; But In Terms Of Nuance, Of Color And Contrast, Film Is Far Superior.

If I Have A Good Dream And I Wake Up Happy. When I Have An Idea, I Feel Happy. Sometimes Achievement And Relationships Can Make Me Happy. I Have A Son And To See Him Grow - He's 22 Now - That Makes Me Happy.

I Find It Particularly Shocking That People Work All Week Long, And Then On The Weekend They Give Their Money To Another Big Corporation. I Remember Reading An Interview With Walt Disney, And He Said How He Got The Idea To Create Disney World. He Saw His Grandson Playing In The Sand In A Little Park, And He Assumed He Was Bored. And He Said He Could Provide Him A Better Alternative. But What You Get Is A Little Bit Of Entertainment, And Then Basically They Try To Get Your Money. And I Truly Believe His Grandson Was Having A Great Time When He Was Playing With The Sand.

I Read About Some Movie Where They Did Everything On Blue Screen, And The Actors Were Not Even Connecting To Each Other.

Orange Is An Underrated Color, It's The Second Most Underrated Color After Yellow.

You Can't Feel Sorry For A Scene. If The Movie Works Without The Scene, Then You Don't Need The Scene.

I Like Collaboration, I Like To Incorporate Other People's Ideas [and] That's What Happens When You Do A Big Movie. Unless You're Called Stanley Kubrick And You Do An Independent Movie For Like $200 Million.

Misinterpretation Leads Me To Inspiration And Creativity Because I Think My Brain Is Trying To Figure Out Some Information That I'm Confused About.

I've Dreamed A Lot, But I'm Not A Very Good Sleeper.

I'm Not Against The Technology At All, I Just Don't Like To Use It If It's Just To Mimic What You Can Do With Traditional Methods.

I Don't Like Vampire Movies Or Zombie Movies. I Went To See 'i Am Legend' With An Ex-girlfriend The Other Day, And I Immediately Realised It Was A Zombie Movie! You Know What I Mean? There Are Certain Rules, And Those Rules Are Things That You've Seen Many Times.

I Like To Use A Bit Of Chaos When I Shoot. I Think It May Be Something From The Way I Shot My First Film - I Was Very Scared, Of Course, And I Prepared Everything, I Wanted To Make Sure That The Characters Did The Right Thing At The Right Time On The Storyboard. But Then I Realised That In Life, There Is So Much More Than What You Can Predict Or Write In Advance, That When You Shoot The Story, It's Good To Leave Some Gaps Where You Lose Control. I Think This Combination Of Chaos And Organisation Gives A Kind Of Quality.

I Kind Of Like The Idea Of Taking A Concept And Going All The Way With It, Even If It's Not Completely Plausible. It's Something That I Like About Making Movies. You Have A Concept That Maybe Would Not Work In Real Life, But You Can Make It Work In The World You're Creating.

Sometimes It's Interesting To See Something That You're Not Used To Seeing, Which Is The Main Ingredient Of Life, And It's Removed From The Usual Entertainment. I Think It's Important To Give The Opportunity To People To Witness The Life Of Somebody Who Was Not Public.

At School I Was Very Shy. I Wasn't Funny Really.

The Mtv Video Awards Were Never About The Video, But About The Song. Most Of The Time It Was Just To Glorify People For The Wrong Reason.

I've Always Liked The Idea Of Inventing Stuff. My Father Told Me, Because I Was Naïve, I Would Think Things Could Work And Therefore Do Them, Because I Would Have No Doubt Even Though There Was No Solid Foundation For This Confidence. I Don't Think I Would Be A Real Inventor. But When I Set Out To Do Animation, Which Was My First Step Into Film-making, I Realised I Could Achieve This Idea. I Could Take Some Elements, Create A Sort Of Clumsy Invention, And Make Them Work For The Camera.

When People Are Very Original, Sometimes They Are Original As A Way To Resist The Mainstream.

I'm Part Of The Consumer Culture... I'm Just Using The Space I Am Given To Express Something That Is Out Of The Space So I'm Part Of The Consumer System But I'm Advocating Stepping Out. Which Is A Contradiction But I Could Be Part Of He Consumer System And Say, 'let's Consume Even More.'

I Like The Days When All The Filmmakers Had Was A Film Roll, A Camera And A Gangster. The Mack Sennett Comedies Were All Like That. They'd Create Little Teams To Go Out And Shoot Films.

My Father Had A Super 8 Camera When I Was A Kid And Sometimes He Would Use It. I Did Some Animation With It. I Did A Lot Of Flipbooks.

Pop Music Is Created By Repression - And Then The System Takes It And Makes Even More Money With It!

It's Part Of My Job To Maintain The Emotional Reality And The Naturalism Even When The Atmosphere Is Contrived.

If You're Not Grown Up Enough To Understand That A Trailer Is Not Done By The Director, Then Fine. Judge The Movie From The Trailer.

It's Very Hard To Say I'm Surrealist. It's Like Saying I'm Poetic. It's Not Something You Want Necessarily To Be Aware Of.

Since I Was A Kid, I've Liked To See How Things Are Done. Sometimes When You See How Things Are Done, It's Like Watching A 'making Of' Within The Story. You See The Physical Aspect, The Construction Of Things.

When I Saw The Matrix And Other Movies Of This Type, I Wished I Had Been Given The Opportunity To Express Myself With All This Technology And Do Something Sort Of Big In Scale, But The Right Material Never Really Came My Way.

Michael Jackson Will Always Be My Favorite Pop Musician; He Was For Years And Years Until His Death, Which Was Horrible To Me. So I Like Pop Culture. But To Me, Even If It's Popular, There Is A Quality In The Music You Have To Be Able To Appreciate.

Every Movie I Do Is Challenging For Me. There Is Some Element Of Imaginative That You Wouldn't Have In A Typical Movie.

I Don't Thrive On Control. I'm Not Looking For Control. I Think I Get Better Results When I Don't Control Things.

Sometimes, When People Use Too Much Blue Screen In Movies, The Actors Don't Look Credible, Because They Have Their Own Opinion Of What The Thing Will Look Like, And Each Person Has A Different Opinion.

Different Opinions

The Beauty Of Doing Film Is That You Construct Whatever You Do Block By Block And You Can Build Something That Will Stay.

Competition Impedes Creativity Because You Present Yourself In A Way That's Going To Been Seen By Somebody Outside Of You. You're Not Very Much Yourself And It Limits You.

I Think The Tools Were Always Available, For Decades And Decades, To Make Your Own Film And Be Creative. I Don't Think People Had To Wait For Youtube To Do This Type Of Small Project. Youtube, I Think It's Great. I Have This Idiotic Satisfaction. And I Think There's A Bit Of That In Youtube. You Share, True, But It's Centralized, And It's Already Sort Of Controlled. I'm More For Something That's Not A Centralized Medium. Like Doing Your Own Film And Screening It Yourself. You Cannot Control People Doing That.

My Grandfather Lived Across The Garden From Us, And In His Attic He Had A Lot Of Radios, Appliances And Inventions That He Had Made Over 50 Years, Such As A Keyboard Called A Clavioline, Which Can Be Heard On Some Beatles Songs - It Was Popular In The 60s. So We Had All That At Home.

I Shoot People In A Way That Makes The Audience Feel Equal To Them. And It's Hard To Express And It's Hard To Execute But I Think It Works On Every Level - The Choice Of The Material The Choice Of The Actor, My Relationship With The Actor, And So On.

I Don't Call Cut Between The Takes - It's My Way To Help The Actor Keep Focused. As Soon As You Say 'cut' You Have 10 People Jumping On Them And Everybody's Trying To Do A Great Job, And They Do, But Sometimes They Forget That The More Important Thing Is The Performance, Creating The Performance.

I Think The Purpose Of Test Screenings Is Different For The Studio And For The Filmmaker. For The Studio, I Think They Want To Know Whether The Film Works Or Not.

I Want To See Abstract Art Move. Especially In The '30s, You Had Animators Doing Innovative Work, And I Was Entranced By That. It's Basically What You See When You Close Your Eyes, When You Fall Asleep.

In My Opinion, It's More Interesting To See Magic Happening In A World That Feels Grounded. If The World Is Already Crazy, Then Anything Can Happen. So It's Better To Start With Something Real.

If You Take A Child From South Africa And You Put Them In Boston, They're Going To Speak With A Boston Accent. And So, That's A Way To See The World As Everybody Is Equal, Not As A Result Of Politics, But As Human Beings.

You Need Philosophy. It Sounds A Little Pompous But I Think When You Direct A Film, The Only Way To Find A Response To The Questions You Keep Asking Yourself Is To Have A Philosophy.

If People Don't Like The Trailer, Then Blame It On The People Who Made The Trailer.

I'm Just Saying To Everyone. The Director Does Not Direct The Trailer. It's An Edited Version That Takes So Many Moments Of The Movie, Sometimes It's Not Even In The Movie. The Director Does The Movie. So Don't Judge The Director Based On The Trailer. Please.

I Had A Lot Of Encouragement And Tolerance From My Parents, But I Also Have Many Friends Who Didn't Get That From Their Parents And In A Way They Have More Strength From Spending Years Where Nobody Believed In Them.

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