I think maybe written films are better than real films. You can see them in your head and yet everything is exactly as you want it to be.
Hal HartleyMore and more, even with a measure of success, I'm not sure what it is people are seeing when they see a movie I've made.
Hal HartleyThough I'm not religious, I am interested in religion. I read a lot of history and I think it came out of that. I just think I couldn't understand certain eras of history without knowing what these people believed in.
Hal HartleyThis notion of changing technology interests me. I work on a computer now, and it's not been easy to adjust. I still prefer to have my hands on film when I'm editing.
Hal Hartley9/11 was my first day teaching at Harvard University. My classes were all canceled and I got back to town two days later. I'm one of those people who doesn't think the world has changed any at all since 9/11. It just seemed to be almost inevitable, something like that. That's one of the reasons why the backstory of Fay Grim goes all the way back into the '80s. I was trying to sketch out the continuity of all this hanky-panky between the security agencies of the world.
Hal HartleyThere's a right way and a wrong way to do things. If you make a chair, you want to make a nice chair. You want people to admire it. I think doing something well is a form of respect for humanity in general. I have found that all incompetence comes from not paying attention, which comes from people doing something that they don't want to do. And doing what you don't want to do means either you have no choice, or you don't think that the moments of your life are worth fighting for.
Hal Hartley