I can bring in all these different components, and I marry these components, and I let them get traversed by the viewer, who reorganizes them.
It isn't up to the painter to define the symbols. Otherwise it would be better if he wrote them out in so many words! The public who look at the picture must interpret the symbols as they understand them.
I don't want anyone to expect anything from any of my films; I just want them to see it and then tell me what they think.
Painters hate having to explain what their work is about. They always say, 'It's whatever you want it to be' - because I think that's their intention, to connect with each person's subconscious, and not to try and dictate.
You want the audience to get your movie, and you want the audience to like it. It's as simple as that. If they don't understand what you're trying to say, you've failed. Of course, you can't get 100 percent of the crowd to understand the movie, but you know when you've reached the people you want to reach.
I think by laying it out for the viewer I'm avoiding the issue of bias.
The public needs art, and it is the responsibility of a ’self-proclaimed artist’ to realize the public needs art, and not to make bourgeois art for the few and ignore the masses. … I am interested in making art to be experienced and explored by as many individuals as possible with as many different individual ideas about the given piece with no final meaning attached. The viewer creates the reality, the meaning, the conception of the piece. I am merely a middleman trying to bring ideas together.
With the camera you might even not need the reporters. But, you see, media can't trust you to watch [Barack] Obama without them telling you what you just saw and analyzing it.
The opinion of the public is sacred. The director is a cook who merely offers different dishes to them and has no right to insist they react in a particular way. A film is just a projection of light, completed only when it crosses the gaze of the audience[...]
'Once Upon A Time In America' is one of the cleverest films of all time, because you can get out of it whatever you want to get out of it.
So the audience, at times, lets us know actually what is so special about the show that we can't even necessarily design or predict. Which is great. That's what you want art to be. You want it to be alive and to actually have a life in the way it's viewed.
My attitude is, I am not a lawyer; I am not a doctor; I am not a scientist. I am a filmmaker and I want to present what each side is saying and let the viewer come to their own conclusion.
A director should not define everything. For me, the movie is a form of a question I pose to the others or to the audience. I want to ask their opinion on my point of view and discuss it with them.
Art, if it is successful, needs no explanation. Star Trek and Spock, if they are works of art, can be discussed. But finally the response comes in individual terms. Each viewer sees what is there for him, depending on his frame of reference.
When we make the show, we are always talking about how the show is really in between what we make and what the viewer thinks of it.
Each movie is different because each audience is different. You're not dictated by what they tell you to do. You're more dictated by seeing symptoms of things you didn't intend, and how you can fix those symptoms.
A viewer as opposed to a filmmaker might see a film differently. But I'm extremely comfortable with my style.
The painter has total control over what they're showing to the viewer.
You can't dictate if a character's going to come off as sympathetic to an audience. I just tried to play it as honest as possible.
One of the things that's fascinating about making movies is a movie when it's done and you start showing it to people, it reveals its impact, which is often times not what you thought.
For me a film is at its best when you can start filling in the story with your own life experience.
You're free to speculate as you wish about the philosophical and allegorical meaning of the film—and such speculation is one indication that it has succeeded in gripping the audience at a deep level—but I don't want to spell out a verbal road map for 2001 that every viewer will feel obligated to pursue or else fear he's missed the point.
Those of us who make films try to make something that we're feeling and that we would like. Then we just hope an audience responds the same way. It's very important to have the electrical circuit made, but I don't have control over how people feel when they flip the switch. So the whole idea of marketing research and test screenings is just foreign to me.
My work has threads of ideas from all over the place. I try to crystallise them in something simple and direct that the viewer can then take where they want.
I think finales are always so hit or miss because they're so personal. When you do a finale, it's always up to the person watching it.
