If you see someone lying out knives and forks consistently, but then one day those knives and forks become weapons you're not sure if he does that as a warrior, that's just his thing.
Antoine FuquaI think people go to the movies to be entertained, to have an experience, to disappear from their own reality for a couple of hours. If the film truly succeeds in everything the filmmaker sets out for it to be, then it's elevated to art. It's elevated to something special, because it gives people a visceral feeling of something they're experiencing as a collective group. You feel something and that's what turns it into what you may call art.
Antoine FuquaHow do you capture the drama of a Rembrandt painting in a movie? How do you feel that moment that they captured in two hours? I kind of fell into it and at one point, I decided I wanted to live an art life; I wanted to tell stories. I came to New York, and did what most people do - you become a PA and run and get coffee and pay your dues and learn until your opportunity comes.
Antoine FuquaSo it's hard to be an artist and be true to the reality of the world you want to create and also make it entertaining and successful financially.
Antoine FuquaI'm a product of older filmmakers I guess, the past where you get to make movies and scenes are what they are. You know if you think about Scorsese back in the day when he was making Taxi Driver, or Coppola or Frankenheimer, Sidney Lumet, they're making films where you witness violence in a real way.
Antoine FuquaThere are many stories of people didn't set out to make a film that became a classic - the whole process was a disaster, everybody hated each other, the movie itself was a disaster, everybody thought the movie and the script was going to be a piece of crap. Look at Alfred Hitchcock and Psycho. Nobody wanted to make Psycho; it was crap to them. The only person that wanted to make Psycho was Hitchcock. Now, it's considered a classic and a work of art.
Antoine Fuqua