I started to wonder what I was doing there
I found this line in Michel Houllebecq’s Submission:
I started to wonder what I was doing there. This very basic question can occur to anyone, anywhere, at any moment in his life, but there’s no denying that the solitary traveler is especially vulnerable.
It reminded me of:
At any street corner the feeling of absurdity can strike any man in the face.
-Albert Camus
I finished Submission last night and it’s one of the best contemporary novels I’ve read. It’s not at all what I expected it to be and apart from being superbly written, it’s left me with a lot of questions.
Claude Chabrol on filmmaking
I still love and find great joy in filmmaking. The part of the job that I love the most is being on set. Thanks to the 50 unlucky people that work with me all the time, they make my joy. When I start shooting I am surrounded by these technicians and actors who do nothing but to make me happy and to share my dream. What can I want more?
and
Luckily the cinema of filmmaking did not stop with La Nouvelle Vague. Of course there are many young directors that are avant-garde nowadays. I think all over the world there are two kinds of filmmakers: those who have the inner need to make films and those who just want to be in the film industry. The second category doesn’t interest me at all, while the first one is always very interesting. Having said that, I see a lot of movies and two or three per year are very good, but the rest you can forget.
Sidney Lumet on theme
The question “What is this movie about?” will be asked over and over again throughout the book. For now, suffice it to say that the theme (the what of the movie) is going to determine the style (the how of the movie)… I work from the inside out. What the movie is about will determine how it will be cast, how it will look, how it will be edited, how it will be musically scored, how it will be mixed, how the titles will look, and, with a good studio, how it will be released.
Truffaut on filmmaking
Making a film is like a stagecoach ride in the old west. When you start, you are hoping for a pleasant trip. By the halfway point, you just hope to survive.
— Ferrand, the Director in Day for Night
That sounds about right.
Mike Nichols on Directing
I didn’t realize it at the time, but this is what I had been training for.
— Mike Nichols in an excellent American Masters episode from PBS
‘At the time’ refers to his time as an actor, writer, and his work before becoming a director.
Most of what I learned about working with actors came from taking acting classes and watching how the great teachers work with actors.
I was talking to some other directors in Chicago last week and we were talking about how it’s a very generalist position. It’s like you figure out one piece and then another and then it comes together more or less.
Some people learn the pieces before directing, and some learn after they start directing. If you learn before, then it’s kind of a revelation when you realize that this is what you were training for (even though you thought you were just trying to be a better actor or coach a team or watching a lot of movies because you loved them).
Listen to everything, but say no to almost everything
The trick is to listen to everything, but also say no to almost everything.
The task of the craftsman
As Dreyfus and Kelly explain, such sacredness is common to craftsmanship. The task of the craftsman, they conclude, “is not to generate meaning, but rather to cultivate in himself the skill of discerning the meanings that are already there. This frees the craftsman of the nihilism of autonomous individualism, providing an ordered world of meaning.
— Cal Newport in his excellent book Deep Work
Kubrick on suspense vs. surprise
In the same vein as Hitchcock/Truffaut, here talking about Barry Lyndon:
Barry Lyndon is a story which does not depend upon surprise. What is important is not what is going to happen, but how it will happen. I think Thackeray trades off the advantage of surprise to gain a greater sense of inevitability and a better integration of what might otherwise seem melodramatic or contrived. In the scene you refer to where Barry meets the Chevalier, the film’s voice-over establishes the necessary groundwork for the important new relationship which is rapidly to develop between the two men. By talking about Barry’s loneliness being so far from home, his sense of isolation as an exile, and his joy at meeting a fellow countryman in a foreign land, the commentary prepares the way for the scenes which are quickly to follow showing his close attachment to the Chevalier. Another place in the story where I think this technique works particularly well is where we are told that Barry’s young son, Bryan, is going to die at the same time we watch the two of them playing happily together. In this case, I think the commentary creates the same dramatic effect as, for example, the knowledge that the Titanic is doomed while you watch the carefree scenes of preparation and departure. These early scenes would be inexplicably dull if you didn’t know about the ship’s appointment with the iceberg. Being told in advance of the impending disaster gives away surprise but creates suspense.
We are creative because everything isn’t okay (yet)
You don’t get creative once everything is okay. In fact, we are creative because everything isn’t okay (yet).
– Centered and complete (Seth Godin)
Make your characters want something right away
I guarantee you that no modern story scheme, even plotlessness, will give a reader genuine satisfaction, unless one of those old-fashioned plots is smuggled in somewhere. I don’t praise plots as accurate representations of life, but as ways to keep readers reading. When I used to teach creative writing, I would tell the students to make their characters want something right away—even if it’s only a glass of water. Characters paralyzed by the meaninglessness of modern life still have to drink water from time to time. One of my students wrote a story about a nun who got a piece of dental floss stuck between her lower left molars, and who couldn’t get it out all day long. I thought that was wonderful. The story dealt with issues a lot more important than dental floss, but what kept readers going was anxiety about when the dental floss would finally be removed. Nobody could read that story without fishing around in his mouth with a finger. Now, there’s an admirable practical joke for you. When you exclude plot, when you exclude anyone’s wanting anything, you exclude the reader, which is a mean-spirited thing to do.