Non-Traditional Narratives Quotes

I was around New York at a time when independent cinema was at its peak and became kind of popular and mainstream. It got some hype, culturally. After that, studios started to have independent companies within their studio system, and they found bigger stars willing to do new material. That's kind of what it's turned into.

Independent films are where you really get to cut your teeth and have some fun and do the things that mainstream Hollywood doesn't want to do.

What's interesting about the U.K. is that it celebrates an alternative voice. It's up for telling new stories.

I think journalism can come from anywhere, and comedy can certainly come from anywhere.

If I were a writer, how I would enjoy being told the novel is dead. How liberating to work in the margins, outside a central perception. You are the ghoul of literature. Lovely.

It's very difficult to understand, but I'm looking for a nonnarrative, multiscreen, present-tense cinema. Narrative is an artifact created by us. It does not exist at all in nature; it is a construct made by us, and I wonder whether we need the narrative anymore.

People are fed up of formula films, and we are getting new space to experiment.

I'm not really volunteering for no family films. I really like the sweet spot of being able to be edgy and controversial.

There is something about the Australian psyche that seems to like films that are slightly offbeat.

I love shooting French films because I don't have to stick with being sophisticated or stuck-up.

Working with David Cronenberg or Darren Aronofsky or even Steven Soderbergh isn't really like a typical Hollywood movie. These are true artists, and have a certain amount of freedom when they work, and they're more like independent filmmakers making their way through big studios.

My feeling is there's a lot of straight drama on television. My goal in life is to try to create something unexpected, and genre is the tool in doing that.

Experimental or independent cinema is so exciting because it is about risk-taking, as there is no formula.

I did New York, I Love You which is a very personal film for me. My most personal film, but it's not like a film I've ever made. I would never do that film as a feature, for instance, because it's not very commercial of an idea.

These new-age directors like Karthik Subbaraj are bringing about a change that I want to be a part of.

The Tamil audience is more receptive to unusual endings.

I've done really well so far in my career by trusting the audience to be as dissatisfied with convention as I am, as a film-goer. You want to go see a film that surprises you in some way.

I am definitely going to continue directing, but I am always going to try to explore new ways of making films. It really is possible to make films in different ways.

I really want to do more mature, artistic, twisted, edgy films. That is my goal.

I like to play with transgression and upending conventions, and I like the idea of rooting genre films in character.

Working in network sitcom arenas, whenever you decide to depart from the norm and tell a story that's not typical, I think you're always a little bit nervous.

I have an instinctual distrust of conventional happy endings.

I've never heard a song written from a stepmother's point of view, about their family.

I'm very concerned that we don't make movies that are original anymore.