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There Are So Many People Who Are Making Movies Now Who Can’t Get Any Kind Of Distribution, So The Market Seems Like It’s Flooded.
-Charlie Kaufman
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There Are So Many

Charlie Kaufman
...
There Are So Many People Who Are Making Movies Now Who Can’t Get Any Kind Of Distribution, So The Market Seems Like It’s Flooded.

Understanding the Quote: "there are so many people who are making movies now who can’t..."

This quote by Charlie Kaufman reflects deeply on the theme of people. It connects to the universal human journey of purpose, motivation, and reflection. Often categorized under People, Kind, Distribution, the quote offers insight, emotional clarity, and intellectual inspiration to readers worldwide.

Whether you’re a student exploring new ideas, a leader trying to motivate your team, or someone seeking direction in life — this quote provides value. It resonates because it’s more than words — it’s a bridge between experience and wisdom. It shows how Charlie Kaufman interprets life's core challenges and triumphs.

Lessons From the Quote

This quote teaches resilience and focus. It reminds readers that no matter where they stand in life, reflection and self-awareness lead to growth. Each word has meaning, and when studied, it becomes clear how impactful thoughtful language can be.

About Charlie Kaufman

Charlie Kaufman is celebrated for insightful thoughts on people and kind. Their legacy lives on through writings that guide, comfort, and inspire. Discover more on their profile page.

Actionable Takeaways

  • Reflect on how this quote applies to your current life path.
  • Share the message with someone who needs inspiration.
  • Write your thoughts on this quote in a journal or blog post.
  • Use it as a daily affirmation or reminder.

Closing Thoughts

Quotes like this endure because they capture universal truths. They comfort us in solitude and empower us in groups. Carry this quote forward — live by its wisdom, share its message, and keep its essence alive.

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Topic
People
Kind
Distribution
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Every Day Of Your Life, You Have Information That Enters Your Head, And That Information Informs Your Understanding Of Things, Or Shifts It, Or Changes It, Or Deepens It, Or Confuses You. Every Day, Every Moment Of Every Day - It's Like This Thing That Happens.
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Before You Start Production, You Have Characters You Have Created Without Actors In Mind, Then All Of A Sudden You've Got Actors. They Bring An Enormous Amount In Creating These Characters, And Creating The Dynamics Between The Characters That You've Written.
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I Try To Make Things Interesting And Thought-provoking.
Thought Provoking
Interesting
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I'm Old Enough, By A Long Shot, To Remember Going To The Library And Spending Days Researching. If I Was Looking For A Line From A Poem Or Something Else I Needed, That Would Be The Trip I Would Have To Take.
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The World Needs You. It Doesn't Need You At A Party Having Read A Book About How To Appear Smart At Parties - These Books Exist, And They're Tempting - But Resist Falling Into That Trap. The World Needs You At The Party Starting Real Conversations, Saying, 'i Don't Know,' And Being Kind.
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There Is So Much Crap In The World, Both In Show And Other Businesses, That I Try To Be Vulnerable Myself, In The Hopes That There Is Some Truth I Can Get To, That Makes People Feel Less Alone In The World.
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I Want To Create Situations That Give People Something To Think About.
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I Don't Subscribe To Anything. I Sit There And I Try To Think About What Seems Honest To Me.
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Meet Me In Montauk.
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There's Theater In Life, Obviously, And There's Life In Theater.
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And So Not Only Do You Have To Make That Work, You Can't Really Start Putting The Thing Together In Any Form Because Some Of The Shots Are Very Short And Obviously Many Of Them Take So Long, You're Waiting Months And Months And Months Before You Can See If It's Going To Be Working Emotionally.
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Scary Is Time Passing And Sickness And Dying And Regret And Isolation And Loneliness And Relationship Problems - As Opposed To A Guy In A Hockey Mask, Which Didn't Seem That Scary.
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If You Create Something That Is Asking For People To Respond As They're Going To Respond, You Have To Allow Them To Respond As They're Going To Respond. Some Of The People Are Going To Be Uninterested And Some People Are Going To Be Mad For Some Reason, Which Is Their Business. That's Just The Way The World Is.
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When I'm Writing A Script, Before I Can Write Dialogue Or Anything, I Have Two Or Three Hundred Pages Of Notes, Which Takes Me A Year. So, It's Not Like "what Happens Next." I've Got Things That I'm Thinking About But I Don't Settle On Them. And If I Try To Write Dialogue Before Then, I Can't. It's Just Garbage.
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I Think That People Have Expectations Of Themselves And Other People That Are Based On These Fictions That Are Presented To Them As The Way Human Life And Relationships Could Be, In Some Sort Of Weird, Ideal World, But They Never Are. So You're Constantly Being Shown This Garbage And You Can't Get There.
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Failure Is A Badge Of Honor. It Means You Risked Failure. And If You Don’t Risk Failure, You’re Never Going To Do Anything That’s Different From What You’ve Already Done Or What Somebody Else Has Done.
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I Think Now That I've Tried Directing, I'm Not Interested In Doing Adaptations Anymore. I Could Do An Adaptation Of Someone Else's Work That I Would Write, But The Idea Of Taking Someone Else's Material Entirely Doesn't Interest Me. One Of The Things That I Found Really Helpful, At Least In My Mind - And I've Never Discussed This With The Actors Or With The People I Work With - Is That Being A Neophyte In Directing, I Feel Like I Have A Kind Of Authority Simply Because I'm The Writer As Well.
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There Are So Many People Who Are Making Movies Now Who Can’t Get Any Kind Of Distribution, So The Market Seems Like It’s Flooded.
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I Think Generally I'm Kind Of Interested In Subjective Experience, What Goes On Inside Someone's Head, That Being All They Really Know Of The World.
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I Think Of Myself As A Guy Who Tries To Write Screenplays And Now Has Tried To Direct One. Anything More Than That Is Meaningless And It Gets In The Way Of Being A Real Human Being.
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I Have A Tendency To Hire People Who Tend To Be Unattractive To The Studios. Maybe This Is A Bad Idea.
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I Tend To Not Only Read Reviews, But Also Every Little Stupid Thing Online. It's A Very Bad Idea, And There's A Lot Of Angry People In The World. And It's Weird To Absorb All That Weirdness.
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I Do Believe You Have A Wound Too. I Do Believe It Is Both Specific To You And Common To Everyone. I Do Believe It Is The Thing About You That Must Be Hidden And Protected, It Is The Thing That Must Be Tap Danced Over Five Shows A Day, It Is The Thing That Won't Be Interesting To Other People If Revealed. It Is The Thing That Makes You Weak And Pathetic. It Is The Thing That Truly, Truly, Truly Makes Loving You Impossible. It Is Your Secret, Even From Yourself. But It Is The Thing That Wants To Live.
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If I Were Doing Somebody Else's Script Or I Adapted A Book By Philip Roth, On Set There Could Be A Million Different Interpretations Of The Material And People Could Argue With Me. Certainly On Synecdoche, New York We Had Discussions And Arguments, But I Felt Like I Had Authority Because I'm A Writer.
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I've Had To Deal, A Lot, With My Own Sense Of Intimidation At Meeting Famous People - Especially Actors, But Really Any Famous People.
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And Then To See The Whole Movie, You're Pretty Much Waiting Until The End Of Production. And The Major Lifting In Terms Of Editing And All That Stuff Is Done Before You Shoot The Movie. That's An Unusual Way To Work.
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The Sad Thing About Working On A Movie Is That You Can Never See The Movie.
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And Also The Idea Of Not Making It Apparent That It's Different From The Rest Of The Film, Even Though There Are Visual Differences, The Audience Is Supposed To Think That They Are With Him When He Wakes Up In The Morning.
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The Biggest Thing That I Came Across, Right Off The Bat, Was That You Can't Shoot This Like A Regular Movie With Multiple Takes. You Have To, Because It's Such A Protracted Process, Break It Down To The Frame And Pretty Much Get One Shot.
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Copying
I Studied Acting At Boston University. I Was In The Theater Department There. Somewhere In There I Decided That Wasn't What I Was Going To Do And I Went To The B.f.a. Film Program At N.y.u.
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I Think There Are Things That Aren't Represented In Movies That Are A Big Part Of Everyone's Life. We Romanticize Everything About People In Movies. One Of The Things I Don't Like In Movies Is That People Feel Alone With Their Bodily Functions In The Real World, As If People In The Movies Don't Do These Things.
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World
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Space
In A Lot Of Movies, Especially Big Studio Ones, They're Not Constructed In Any Other Way Than To Get People To Like Them And Then Tell Their Friends. It's A Product.
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I Like Titles That Are A Little Difficult, Because It's Kind Of Counterintuitive.
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Kind
The Difference Between A Movie And A Play Is That The Production You End Up With Is The Production. If A Movie That I Spent Time On Turns Out To Be Crap, It's Never Going To Be Made Again.
Play
Differences
Ends
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Keys
I'm Interested In Art, And I Think About The Process Of Making Art. It's Part Of My Personality, My Experience Of The World, So It Ends Up In The Movies. It's Where My Head Is.
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Thinking
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I Wanted To Deal With Someone's Idea Of Their Relationship.
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Wanted
Deals
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Way
Know How
I Think I've Had Pretty Good Experiences For The Most Part With The People Who Have Directed My Screenplays. It's More That I Wanted To See What It Would Be Like If I Didn't Have To Collaborate With Anybody, To Have A Sense Of Purity Of The Thing From Beginning To End. I Liked Doing It. It's Really Different From Writing. Directing Is A More Pragmatic Experience, Where You Have To Deal With The Restrictions Of Time And Money That Force You To Make Certain Decisions You Don't Have To Make When You're Writing.
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Thinking
People
I Think Everything I Do Is Based On My Experience In The World In One Way Or Another.
Thinking
World
Way
I Really Don't Have Any Solutions And I Don't Like Movies That Do.
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Say Who You Are, Really Say It In Your Life And In Your Work. Tell Someone Out There Who Is Lost, Someone Not Yet Born, Someone Who Won’t Be Born For 500 Years. Your Writing Will Be A Record Of Your Time. It Can’t Help But Be That. But More Importantly, If You’re Honest About Who You Are, You’ll Help That Person Be Less Lonely In Their World Because That Person Will Recognise Him Or Herself In You And That Will Give Them Hope.
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There Really Is Only One Ending To Any Story. Human Life Ends In Death. Until Then, It Keeps Going And Gets Complicated And There's Loss. Everything Involves Loss; Every Relationship Ends In One Way Or Another.
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Stories
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I Don't Write Genre Stuff In Any Form. I'm Not Interested In It. I Always Try To Do The Opposite Of That.
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Opposites
Trying
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My Time On The Set Is The Least Of My Involvement. Most Of My Time Is In Pre-production And Post-production.
Involvement
Posts
My Time
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Self
Insecurity
Different
I'm Not A Celebrity. I'm Intentionally And Defiantly Not A Celebrity. I Don't Have Any Interest In It. I Don't Have Any Talent For It. I Keep My Personal Life Out Of My Public Life As Cleanly As I Can.
Talent
Cleanliness
Interest
Writing Is A Journey Into The Unknown.
Writing
Journey
Adaptation
Story Ideas, But It's Also Musing On Stuff That I'm Thinking About. This Leads Me To This And This Leads Me To This. They're Kind Of Random And Haphazard. Often I Can't Find Anything. Somehow, By Doing That, Even Though I Don't Necessarily Refer To Them In A Specific Way, I Have Some Sort Of Architecture In My Head.
Thinking
Ideas
Stories
I Do Have Some Theatrical Background. I've Written Plays And Seen Plays And Read Plays. But I Also Read Novels. One Thing I Don't Read Is Screenplays.
Play
Novel
Backgrounds
When I Found Myself In That Situation - That Actors Are Like Children, I Tried To Be Successful. And When It Worked And I Figured Out How To Communicate That Things Were Good - Or At Least Okay - Then I Felt Pleased.
Children
Successful
Situation
We Try To Organize The World, Which Isn't Organized The Way Our Brains Want To Organize It. We Tell Stories About The People In Our Lives, We Project Ideas Onto Them. We Project Relationships With People, We Make Our Lives Into Stories. I Don't Think We Can Avoid Doing That.
Thinking
Ideas
People
Everything Is More Complicated Than You Think. You Only See A Tenth Of What Is True.
Thinking
Complicated
I Feel Like I Want To Keep Moving Toward Idiosyncracy. Personal, Personal, Personal.
Moving
Want
Keep Moving
I Know That As A Very Young Child, I Was Afraid Of Death. Many Children Become Aware Of The Notion Of Death Early And It Can Be A Very Troubling Thing. We're All In This Continuum: I'm This Age Now, And If I Live Long Enough I'll Be That Age. I Was 20 Once, I Was 10, I Was 4. People Who Are 20 Now Will Be 50 One Day. They Don't Know That! They Know It In The Abstract, But They Don't Know It. I'd Like Them To Know It, Because I Think It Gives You Compassion.
Children
Thinking
Compassion
I Don't Think I've Had A Lonely Moment In My Life.
Lonely
Thinking
Moments
I Think If Something Resonates, Even If It's Surreal, It's Because It Is Relatable And I Think That That's A Core Issue For Me.
Thinking
Issues
Surreal
I Hate A Movie That Will End By Telling You That The First Thing You Should Do Is Learn To Love Yourself. That Is So Insulting And Condescending, And So Meaningless. My Characters Don't Learn To Love Each Other Or Themselves.
Hate
Love Yourself
Character
I Spend A Lot Of Time In Preproduction Working With Authors, And A Lot Of Time In Postproduction.: Editing, Music, All That Sort Of Stuff. Casting. On The Set There's Not A Lot For Me To Do.
Editing
Stuff
Casting
My Point Of View Comes More From The Literature I've Read And The Comedy Of The Era. When I Was A Kid, Coming Across National Lampoon Magazine, That Was A Big Thing. I Suddenly Felt Like There Were Other People That Felt The Way I Did, And There Was A Way Of Expressing And Communicating This Worldview.
Kids
Views
People
I Don't Have A Style. I Wouldn't Say I Have A Style As A Writer, Either. I Know People Have Said "this Is What He Does," But When I'm Writing, I Don't Think About That. I Don't Think About A Style.
Writing
Thinking
People
I've Kind Of Come To The Conclusion That What Passes For Realism In Movies Has Nothing To Do With Reality And That My Stuff Is More Realistic Than That.
Reality
Stuff
Kind
As I'm Writing, I Start To See Connections, And Themes I Didn't See, And That Sparks Other Things. So Then I Go Back And Rewrite Things Or Alter Them. It's A Combination Of Intuition And A Lot Of Finessing. It Becomes A Combination Of The Rational And The Irrational.
Writing
Intuition
Connections
I Want To Do My Own Thing, And I'm Trying To Get Closer To Realizing That As A Filmmaker.
Trying
Want
Realizing
The Way I Work Is Not The Way That You Work, And The Whole Point Of Any Creative Act Is That. What I Have To Offer Is Me, What You Have To Offer Is You, And If You Offer Yourself With Authenticity And Generosity I Will Be Moved.
Generosity
Creative
Way
I Will Be Dying And So Will You, And So Will Everyone Here. That's What I Want To Explore. We're All Hurtling Towards Death, Yet Here We Are For The Moment, Alive. Each Of Us Knowing We're Going To Die, Each Of Us Secretly Believing We Won't.
Believe
Knowing
Dying
I Do Throw Out A Lot Of Ideas, And I Forget Completely About Them.
Ideas
Forget
I Have Ideas Written Down Some Places, But Usually I Can't Find Them. I'm Not Very Organized.
Ideas
Organized
Written
As A Writer, Or As A Filmmaker, You Have To Present Yourself, And Part Of What Yourself Is Is What You're Interested In, Or What You Think Is Funny, Or What You Think Is Sad, Or What You Think Is Horrible.
Funny
Thinking
Horrible
There's A Point I Can Get To Where I Start Writing Character And Then Through The Dialogue, After All Of This Preparation, The Thing Starts To Feel Like It's A Character Developing Through The Dialogue. A Lot Of Character Traits Do Come From Writing Dialogue, But I Have To Be Ready To Do It.
Writing
Character
Preparation
I Try To Present Something That Is True So I Don't Further Destroy The World With My Contribution To It.
Trying
World
Contribution
I Think Directing And Writing Are Very Different Jobs. Obviously, Directing Is A More Social And Managerial Job. The Other Thing About Directing Is That It's A Very, Very Pragmatic Job, And Writing Isn't.
Jobs
Writing
Thinking
I Like Actors - I Used To Be One.
Actors
Used
Used To Be
The Passionate Ones, The Ones Who Go After What They Want, May Not Get What They Want, But They Remain Vital, In Touch With Themselves, And When They Lie On Their Deathbeds, They Have Few Regrets.
Regret
Lying
Passionate
I Think That People Create The World That They Live In. Your Existence Is Very Subjective, And You Tell Stories And Organize The World Outside Of You Into These Stories To Help You Understand It.
Thinking
People
Stories
When I'm Writing, I'm Trying To Immerse Myself In The Chaos Of An Emotional Experience, Rather Than Separate Myself From It And Look Back At It From A Distance With Clarity And Tell It As A Story. Because That's How Life Is Lived, You Know?
Distance
Writing
Emotional
People Will Say Things After A Screening That It Affects Them In A Certain Way, Which Is Why I Don't Like To Explain What Certain Things Are About. I Want Them To Have That. It Limits People's Ability To Understand Something If I Say It's "about This." That's Happened To Us A Bunch On This.
People
Want
Way
I Can Never Watch Anything I've Been Involved In, Because I Know It, And I Know What The Making Of It Was Like, And I Know What's Been Cut Out And Changed. I Just Know It.
Cutting
Watches
Changed
You Spend Most Of Your Time As A Director Trying To Move Forward With The Movie. It Happens On A Daily Basis, If Not More Than Once A Day, That You Are Struggling With Budgetary Constraints. Whereas When You're Writing, The Limitation That You Have Is Your Imagination. So It's Decidedly Non-pragmatic.
Struggle
Moving
Writing
So When I Write Characters And Situations And Relationships, I Try To Sort Of Utilize What I Know About The World, Limited As It Is, And What I Hear From My Friends And See With My Relatives.
Writing
Character
Trying
I Think If I've Worked Anything Through With Screenwriting It's That I'm Not Going To Be Able To Work Anything Through.
Thinking
Able
Screenwriting
The End Is Built Into The Beginning.
Chaos
Ends
Built
The Way I Write Is Very Much Without Kind Of A Goal. I Have Something I'm Interested In And Then I Decide I'm Going To Explore It. I Don't Know Where The Characters Are Going To Go, I Don't Know What The Movie Is Going To Do Or What The Screenplay Is Going To Do. For Me, That's The Way To Keep It Alive.
Writing
Character
Goal
We're All One Thing, Like Cells In A Body. 'cept We Can't See The Body. The Way Fish Can't See The Ocean. And So We Envy Each Other. Hurt Each Other. Hate Each Other. How Silly Is That? A Heart Cell Hating A Lung Cell.
Hurt
Hate
Ocean
You Get A Kind Of Surreal Feeling And Also It Allows You To Focus On The Things We Want You To Focus On In A New Way - The Stuff That's Very Small And Mundane That Happens In A Person's Life When They're In A Hotel Room. There's More Interest Because You're Seeing A Puppet Do Things That You're Very Familiar With That You Might Not Notice If It Was A Human Doing It.
Focus
Feelings
Puppets
I Really Like When Critics Reveal Their Subjectivity And Their Humanity. I Prefer It When People Say Nice Things, But If They Say Not-nice Things Or Things That Are Critical, I'm Open To It And I Accept It. I Mean, I Have To Live With It. But I Do Think There's A Dishonesty In Not Acknowledging That You're A Person With An Opinion. I Think It's Almost Like A Power Grab.
Nice
Mean
Thinking
She Was Nice. Nice Is Good.
Nice
Eternal Sunshine
You Are What You Love. Not What Loves You.
Love You
Adaptation
What You Love
The Conventional Wisdom Is - People Say This All The Time - You Should Only Write Something When You're Far Enough Away From It That You Can Have A Perspective. But That's Not True. That's A Story That You're Telling. The Truth Of It Is Here, Right Now. It's The Only Truth That We Ever Know. And I'm Interested In That Truth And The Confusion Being Part Of The Experience And Sorting It Your Way Through And Figuring It Out.
Writing
People
Confusion
It's Good When Someone Comes To A Book Or A Movie And Interacts With It. It's The Difference Between An Illustration And A Painting. An Illustration Serves A Specific Purpose, And A Painting Is Something You Can Immerse Yourself In.
Book
Illustration
Differences
If You Ever Got Me, You Wouldn't Have A Clue What To Do With Me.
Clue
Ifs
I Like For People To Figure Things Out For Themselves. It's Not Like I Have The Right Answer, But If I Have A Visceral Reaction To Something, I'm Sure That Other People Will, Too.
People
Answers
Reactions
I'm Trying To Tell A Story And Do It Truthfully.
Trying
Stories
There Is A Lot Of Management Going On With Directing. Maybe That Was The Biggest Surprise-just The Amount Of Tending That I Had To Do. The Different Personalities . . . It's Not My Way, And It's Never Been My Function Before As A Writer. I Tend To Be A Moody And Somewhat Withdrawn Person, And I Felt Very Clearly That I Had To Throw That Away Because That Wasn't Allowed Here - There Were Other People Who Were Going To Be Filling That Role. Sometimes It Became Exhausting, Especially Around The Eleventh Hour Of The Day.
People
Personality
Different
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