Peter Weir Quotes

Just through the process of trying to make the living and the dead feel real, all these little benefits came out. And these benefits turned out to be much more articulate statements of what I really believe. And somehow they were more convincing because they were arrived at at such length.

The way Nolan looks at things is just amazing. It can be easily seen in all his films. I was just watching his videos on how he came up with the screenplay of 'Memento,' and it's just extraordinary. It just opens up your mind.

We try to not write stories based on reaction. We try to write them based on character integrity as we understand it and observe it.

Put someone on a horse looking cold and wet, and they don't have to act. They just are cold and wet.

Let's be honest, you and I have probably seen a whole lot of family films - you have to do something special. Jim Strouse has the ability to write this hairpin turn between emotion and comedy that is very real. In real life, you don't have time to prepare for the bad stuff and you don't have time to prepare for the good stuff, it just sort of happens.

When real actors are approaching their work, we could be on a little stage somewhere, doing community theater. It's all the same. They're just trying to make the scene work. They're just trying to do the best they can and figure it out.

If you're trying to be realistic and bring real life to the screen, you are going to have different elements. That's what I'm trying to do. As I make the movie, different elements come in naturally.

Sometimes you have to think about what you're going to say, in real life, so when you see that thought process going on in a movie, it feels real and looks real.

Emotion should not be rendered by an excited trembling; it can neither be added on nor be imitated. It is the seed, the work is the flower.

Unless you're playing a real character based on a real person, if someone else has done it before, you're probably better off not watching it as an actor. Otherwise you end up trying to copy someone else.

When you're acting, everything is there around you, you just have to believe that it's real. When you're standing there with a slightly grey wig on and you have a baby in your arms screaming in your ear, you can go: "Well, I guess this is what it's like!"

During the '60s, I think, people forgot what emotions were supposed to be. And I don't think they've ever remembered. I think that once you see emotions from a certain angle you can never think of them as real again. That's what more or less has happened to me. I don't really know if I was ever capable of love, but after the '60s I never thought in terms of 'love' again.

Your duty as an actor is to try to make it as real as possible.

I don't write [screenplay character] biographies beforehand. I usually go in knowing some sequences: this is where I want to start, this is where I want to end.

The theater's a live thing, and film is, to some extent, a discipline where you're putting everything together and trying to execute something exactly. You do it away from people and then you present it at the end.

You know, Vik, you’re amazingly human at times. (Alix) I know. But I wonder if the feelings I have are real or just electrical stimulations in my cortex that simulate human emotion. I wish I knew if they were real or imagined. (Vik) And that makes you completely human, sweetie. We all have those doubts. (Alix)

Real affection comes from the face. Those political leaders, when they meet, they are always hugging, but not very genuine. Deep, sincerity comes from face and eye.

My characters seem real because they are drawn from the realities of my life. I didn't have to research their pain; I just tapped into my own.

It's very important to keep the emotions grounded, to keep the characters in some real place.

My figures come and go, suggested by fortune or misfortune. I try to fix them divested of their apparent accidental quality.

If I had a script that I was ready to shoot tomorrow, I'd work on it every day until we got into production as soon as possible, but I don't have that script yet, so I'm trying to find and support writers, really young writers and hopefully come across a story that I wanna tell one day.

My flag is always flying. My shingle is always out. I'm always looking for movie ideas. The hardest part of this whole movie-making endeavor is finding ideas. That's the real goal.

I might say that what amateurs call a style is usually only the unavoidable awkwardnesses in first trying to make something that has not heretofore been made.

You know, comments about style always seem strange to me - 'why do you work in this style, or in that style' - as if you had a choice in the matter... What you're doing is trying to stay alive and continue and not die.

When you're writing, at least when I'm writing, I don't think about themes and I try not to sermonize with any particular message.