John Boorman Quotes

Part of George R.R. Martin's brilliant storytelling is taking the carpet out from under your feet.

Every once in a while, when the audience is expecting to see one thing, you have to show them something else.

Every 20 minutes you've got to have a bump, you've got to have a change in course, you've got to unsettle the audience. It can't be too predictable so something has to happen. I think that was something that Hitchcock did very well too. You couldn't let an audience feel too settled in.

I like taking genres and subverting them. I did that with 'In the Valley of Elah.' I said, 'Okay, this is just a murder mystery. Relax.' And then, two thirds of the way through, I broke every convention of a murder mystery.

The predictable thing about 'The Good Wife' is how unpredictable 'The Good Wife' is.

I've said in many interviews that I like my fiction to be unpredictable. I like there to be considerable suspense.

You never want your second act or the whole movie to just be this relentless march towards its goal. You want things to take the audience by surprise.

When I read a book, I like to be surprised. I don't want to read the same genre formula that I've read a hundred times before.

There's not much TV these days where you really get that element of surprise. There are so many spoilers all the time.

'Homeland' does have that ability to tear the rug out from under you.

When the narrator says, 'This is a story without surprises,' most of the time, this is not what happens.

My desire as a storyteller is to always catch the readers off guard; to give them something they aren't expecting, and take them in a direction that is satisfying in the here and non.

When I watch television, I want to be surprised.

I basically like the unpredictability factor. When I watch a film, if it becomes predictable, I lose interest in it.

If one does not expect the unexpected, one will not find it out, since it is not to be searched out, and difficut to compass.

Life takes us to unexpected places sometimes. The future is never set in stone, remember that.

I like the brighter, shinier, happier comic-book material on a personal level, but I also think the best stories are told where you just don't know from page to page or moment to moment when the sucker-punches are coming.

You always have to be ahead of the audience so that they have to always catch up and know the movie's not quite going exactly where you think it's going, or expecting it to be going.

The writers are very good about misdirection and changeups, and that's what's great about it. We always think we know what's going to happen and then they throw a curveball that you don't see coming.

No matter what, expect the unexpected. And whenever possible BE the unexpected.

It's good to be unexpected with it.

the table of elements does not contain one of the most powerful elements that make up our world, and that is the element of surprise.

I used to think that running an organization was equivalent to conducting a symphony orchestra. But I don't think that's quite it; it's more like jazz. There is more improvisation. Someone once wrote that the sound of surprise is jazz, and if there's any one thing that we must try to get used to in this world, it's surprise and the unexpected. Truly, we are living in world where the only thing that's constant is change.

Life doesn't often turn out the way we think it will, does it?

There are no absolutes in relationships. You can't take anything for granted. You can count on absolutely nothing but the unexpected. You only get in trouble when you start thinking that you're some kind of exception to the rule.