Gus Van Sant quotes - page 2

My family moved a lot as a kid. We started in Colorado, where I lived for five years. We moved to Chicago for two years, to San Francisco for one year, Connecticut for seven, Oregon for a couple years, and then I went to school. (Gus Van Sant)
There's a lot of films that have relatively rigid road maps because they have a script and others that are less rigid because they have less of a script, like 'Elephant.' The road map becomes more interpretive, maybe, than one with a detailed script. Editing-wise, they all have their problems. View quote
Gus Van Sant
Because I didn't have brothers, I was always interested in the kids down the street that had four brothers in their family, so I became one of them - but it was not my family. I've always been attracted to temporary families. They tend to be lost characters. View quote
Gus Van Sant
One of the things that is devastating is I realise I haven't been living a different life than when I was, like, 12. I'm shocked at how reclusive I've been since then. I was unaware of it until recently. View quote
Gus Van Sant
My department is to get actors to do stuff. View quote
Gus Van Sant
Well, I want to do everything in sort of a documentary style, ever since I started in the '80s. View quote
Gus Van Sant
There are all kinds of ways that people present their films, but that's kind of a good feeling, if you can make it seem like the characters are really there. View quote
Gus Van Sant
I find it interesting, the different rules that apply to journalism and drama, even though journalism has become more and more about entertainment, and entertainment has become more and more about journalism. View quote
Gus Van Sant
My art teacher in junior high was a very out gay man and a mentor to me. View quote
Gus Van Sant
I mean, I think I'm pretty sentimental. View quote
Gus Van Sant
Yeah, Kubrick's a big influence. In something like 'A Clockwork Orange,' he is trying to use the practical light - I mean, at least he says that in his interviews, like they're not using traditionally Hollywood lights. In 'Elephant' we basically used no lights; we never really adjusted. (Gus Van Sant)
When I grew up in the '60s, we were actually dominated by this, you know, sort of conforming '50s culture, even though we were like trying to express our own culture, like, the dominant culture was the thing that was forming us. And I think that that's true today. View quote
Gus Van Sant
The biopic also wasn't a form that I necessarily believed in, because you can never really get it right, you know? It's also a form that's very popular - the straight-ahead biopic. View quote
Gus Van Sant
I think over the course of 14 films, I'm returning to a place that I know to tell a story... the same way Spielberg returned to fantasy, Lucas returned to the 'Star Wars' saga, or John Ford returned to the western. View quote
Gus Van Sant
The things that inform student culture are created and controlled by the unseen culture, the sociological aspects of our climbing culture, our 'me' generation, our yuppie culture, our SUVs, or, you know, shopping culture, our war culture. View quote
Gus Van Sant
Gay marriage is the last bastion of, to me... as a legal, ceremonial, sentimental and religious side, it's one of the last steps. Retaining your job being one of the earlier steps, like, not getting kicked out of your job because you're gay. View quote
Gus Van Sant
Usually when I read something, first of all I'm looking for the story and then when I reread it, I'm sort of checking every part of it to see if every scene is necessary. View quote
Gus Van Sant
I had wanted to do a comedy. View quote
Gus Van Sant
Sometimes I wish I had never met you, because then I could go to sleep at night not knowing there was someone like you out there. View quote
Gus Van Sant
If I'm diagnosed with cancer I might become despondent, but someone young might not, and they might need connections with somebody outside their circle of family because their family is so despondent. View quote
Gus Van Sant
Everything's changing so fast that it's sometimes hard to keep up. (Gus Van Sant)
The reason I know about 'Tomb Raider' is from when I was researching 'Elephant.' It was 1999, and I was trying to research the Columbine-massacre kids, and they had played video games, and I, at the time, had never really seen one. It was a world I didn't know. View quote
Gus Van Sant
I don't think American independent films have ever really been particularly experimental, except for the original guys from the '60s who were huge influences, like Stan Brakhage, Robert Breer, and Stan van der Beek. They were the true independents. View quote
Gus Van Sant
There is a way that a younger person can accept the inevitable problem that they're going to die, whereas somebody a little bit older might be overcome. View quote
Gus Van Sant
I've always been interested in how to present something that relates to our reality - which is not really... I don't even know if documentary itself does as good a job. It has its own problems in trying to get at the reality of the situation. View quote
Gus Van Sant