Irvin Kershner on why non-American films affect him the most

”American film tends to be sentimental and rarely depicts the soul of its citizens. And if the film doesn’t have guns, it isn’t an action film. But for me, the real turnoff is in the final scenes. The experience is often wrapped up in a pretty consumer package guaranteed to show us that life is good and people finally see the light. Foreign films tend not to have this denouement. The chips fall and lay dead and buried if need be. Think of Kurosawa’s Seven Samurai, David Lean’s Lawrence of Arabia, Ingmar Berman’s great films Fanny and Alexander and Cries and Whispers, or Fellini’s 8 1/2. The stories are not skewed for the happy ending. The studio system is geared to make money, not to tell stories. American films generally cost too much to make and cost millions more to advertise so that the product can open as many pockets as possible.” (Irvin Kershner)

Alex Garland on creative differences

“I completely ignore that aspect of it. The way I approach these things is with transparency. I never bullshit fucking anybody about what my intention is. I say, ‘Here is the script, the script is not a pretend script, it’s the actual script. Here are some visuals, too.’ The way I see it from that point is that if they agree to make the film, then it becomes like a contract. Importantly, that contract is not open to being broken later. There’s a creative agreement. If people do have a problem, and that’s find if they do, but the time to express that is early, not late.” (Alex Garland)

Horrorywood

“In Hollywood, the question you get asked a million times is, ‘What wouldn’t you do to succeed?’ And your hunger is part of the deal with the devil. The horrible thing is that there’s an unwritten rule, an unspoken agreement, between anybody who arrives. Every single high school king and queen that arrives in L.A. knows what to expect. You do anything to get on because the riches, when they’re delivered to you, are profound.” (Duncan Roy)

”This business isn't just about achieving...”

”...it's about longevity, it's about hanging in there.” (Julie Delpy, fighting for her passion project, ”My Zoe”)

Hollywood Reporter's roundtables' awesome secret...

...is the multitude of autographs under the table!

(James Franco, Sam Rockwell, Gary Oldman)

the reality of moviemaking...

"The problem with auteurism is that it presupposes that one person can impress upon 95 people, so clearly, that the manifestation of whatever it is going on in your head can be clearly attributed to them. The reality of moviemaking is, y’know, it’s a rat fuck. Every day is a skirmish, and you might escape every skirmish, but there are injuries and there losses, and there are things that you had 10 meetings about that go off perfectly, and there are things that you’ve had no meetings about that ended up taking eight of the 12 hours in the day because you didn’t think it was going to be so complicated. 

So the notion that someone calls this perfect, idealised version of the scene… It’s like the jet-propulsion industry, the idea that something is wind-tunnel tested and is gonna go off the way it’s supposed to – it never goes off the way it’s supposed to. My issue with auteurism is, how do you attribute a master plan to a happy accident? There are certain things that you can count on. You have to work at it, and you have to know what it is you’re trying to do and impart that to an army of people who all have their own ideas about what’s important.

Everybody who comes on to a set looks at it from a slightly different standpoint. You can’t say to the third violinist, ‘This is what the totality of the thing should sound like.’ You just need them to get them to do their thing. When you hear it, it either moves you or it doesn’t, so you have to figure if it needs a little bit more of this or that. That’s happening in the rehearsal, it’s happening in the coverage throughout the day. You hone in as you get tighter and tighter and tighter on people, but you’re also getting tighter in terms of time. You’re honing in on one little thing, and then you do the same again in the edit, with the sound effects, with the music, with the colour grading. Suddenly all this stuff comes together, and the notion that anyone could say, ‘This is precisely what it’s going to look like,’ to me is amazing." (David Fincher)

Yorgos Lanthimos' first requirement

[The director said he has certain requirements for any actor interested in working with him.] “First of all, I don’t meet anyone who hasn’t seen my films,” he said. “If they’re not interested them, why would we waste both of our times?” He also makes it clear that, despite his bizarre and often cryptic storytelling, he won’t provide any easy answers. “I will not become analytical about my work,” he said. “You read the screenplay, that’s what it is, and that’s what I know about it. There’s no other information I can give you as background for your character as a story, or why I wrote this. You read it, and either you respond to it and we do it or not.” (Yorgos Lanthimos)