Michel Gondry Quotes

Of course, from time to time, I want to do everything myself and be more involved on my own with the creative process. But I don't mind the collaboration at all.

The problem is, with a lot of children's films, they are very commercial.

At school I was very shy. I wasn't funny really.

I think always my interest in making movies is to have something really technical mixed with something that was not so formal...something free.

The first dolly track was somebody who had the idea to put the camera on a boat on a canal. So the boat would move very slowly but steadily. So they would see all that surrounds you and you'd see the landscape changing slowly. So that was the first time.

I don't call cut between the takes - it's my way to help the actor keep focused. As soon as you say 'cut' you have 10 people jumping on them and everybody's trying to do a great job, and they do, but sometimes they forget that the more important thing is the performance, creating the performance.

I read about some movie where they did everything on blue screen, and the actors were not even connecting to each other.

I like the days when all the filmmakers had was a film roll, a camera and a gangster. The Mack Sennett comedies were all like that. They'd create little teams to go out and shoot films.

I don't like vampire movies or zombie movies. I went to see 'I Am Legend' with an ex-girlfriend the other day, and I immediately realised it was a zombie movie! You know what I mean? There are certain rules, and those rules are things that you've seen many times.

Objectivity is very hard to achieve. It needs some research and patience. If you want to do something honest, you have to explore it a little longer.

I'm not judging the films. People make these connections through a film, or because they know them. But the fact that they erase them and have to start from scratch, I think that's an important point. A lot of kids, when they have a camera, have tended to do remakes of existing films. You have a lot of kids that make Star Wars. And I think that's creativity, but not as much creativity as starting from scratch.

I think animation is a very truthful way to express your thoughts, because the process is very direct. That's what I've always liked about animation, particularly abstract animation. You go from the idea to execution, straight from your brain. It's like when you hear someone playing an instrument, and you feel the direct connection between the instrument and his brain, because the instrument becomes an extension of his arms and fingers. It's like a scanner of the brain and thought process that you can watch, or hear.

I think my imagination dictates the technologies I use. But at the same time, my imagination can be technologic. Sometimes I see a tool and I know immediately how to use it, but most of the time I use the tool for an idea I already have.

You can't feel sorry for a scene. If the movie works without the scene, then you don't need the scene.

Sometimes it's interesting to see something that you're not used to seeing, which is the main ingredient of life, and it's removed from the usual entertainment. I think it's important to give the opportunity to people to witness the life of somebody who was not public.

I'm not against the technology at all, I just don't like to use it if it's just to mimic what you can do with traditional methods.

The beauty of doing film is that you construct whatever you do block by block and you can build something that will stay.

I want to see abstract art move. Especially in the '30s, you had animators doing innovative work, and I was entranced by that. It's basically what you see when you close your eyes, when you fall asleep.

I find it particularly shocking that people work all week long, and then on the weekend they give their money to another big corporation. I remember reading an interview with Walt Disney, and he said how he got the idea to create Disney World. He saw his grandson playing in the sand in a little park, and he assumed he was bored. And he said he could provide him a better alternative. But what you get is a little bit of entertainment, and then basically they try to get your money. And I truly believe his grandson was having a great time when he was playing with the sand.

And I'm not a micromanagement guy. I prefer to spend my time doing other stuff than that.

If people don't like the trailer, then blame it on the people who made the trailer.

There is an amount of abstraction in my movies, and sometimes they don't really understand it until the film is finished.

Every movie I do is challenging for me. There is some element of imaginative that you wouldn't have in a typical movie.

I think some people feel that if you are going to have 3D, then you have to shoot in 3D, but they shoot 3D, so of course they're going to say 'my way of doing a film is better.' I'm not telling anyone how they should do their film, so why should anyone tell me how I should do mine?

Michael Jackson will always be my favorite pop musician; he was for years and years until his death, which was horrible to me. So I like pop culture. But to me, even if it's popular, there is a quality in the music you have to be able to appreciate.

You don't watch home movie for the technique, you watch because it's reminiscing on good moments you spent with your friends. It reflects you. It belongs to you. So I was thinking people could, instead of spending their money to go and see a blockbuster, make their own movies. Collect the money and make a new one every week. I thought it would be nice to create a world that makes this construct possible.

I find, surprisingly, that actors are liberated in their work if there's stuff going on around them, because they can't think too much about who they're supposed to be.

I like actors who don't have to think too hard about what they have to do to achieve their performance.

In my opinion, it's more interesting to see magic happening in a world that feels grounded. If the world is already crazy, then anything can happen. So it's better to start with something real.

I love 3D a lot, I have a great interest in 3D, so if I am given the tools to do a project with 3D, it's a dream for me.

I think the tools were always available, for decades and decades, to make your own film and be creative. I don't think people had to wait for YouTube to do this type of small project. YouTube, I think it's great. I have this idiotic satisfaction. And I think there's a bit of that in YouTube. You share, true, but it's centralized, and it's already sort of controlled. I'm more for something that's not a centralized medium. Like doing your own film and screening it yourself. You cannot control people doing that.

Pop music is created by repression - and then the system takes it and makes even more money with it!

Misinterpretation leads me to inspiration and creativity because I think my brain is trying to figure out some information that I'm confused about.

When people are very original, sometimes they are original as a way to resist the mainstream.

I've always loved 3D. In fact, as a kid, I was exposed to 3D at an early age because my grandfather was a specialist of 3D in cinematheques. And then my cousin put it in 'Science of Sleep' with toilet paper tube cities. But he was a specialist and I always wanted to do something in 3D.

That's what the internet is: it's like bombarding your eyeballs with these myriad blinking colour lights. It's like trying to watch a movie on your phone in the middle of Times Square.

I don't like the idea of competition - maybe because I kept losing them when I was a kid. Maybe it's better to be the one who loses?

The problem is when you get forced to use ideas that aren't good. When I can filter the ideas and use the best of them, I am happy to collaborate.

I always wanted to create this community that would come and tell their own story, shoot it - and watch them. The idea is to not have one entity who creates the work, the project, and another entity who consumes it; the idea is people create their own work, like somebody cultivating his garden.

I hate cynicism. I wipe it from me. I don't like cynical people. I don't like cynical movies. Cynicism is very easy. You don't have to justify it. You don't have to fight for it.

People who get to express their voice are paid by the people who make profit from it. So they're going to make you believe you have to spend your money buying these products otherwise you won't be happy. This is really wrong. Especially the implication it carries.

I'm attracted to working with comedians because they don't have that stars' idea of what a hero should be. The downside is they're always addressing the camera too much.

I've always liked the idea of inventing stuff. My father told me, because I was naïve, I would think things could work and therefore do them, because I would have no doubt even though there was no solid foundation for this confidence. I don't think I would be a real inventor. But when I set out to do animation, which was my first step into film-making, I realised I could achieve this idea. I could take some elements, create a sort of clumsy invention, and make them work for the camera.

When I saw The Matrix and other movies of this type, I wished I had been given the opportunity to express myself with all this technology and do something sort of big in scale, but the right material never really came my way.

My grandfather lived across the garden from us, and in his attic he had a lot of radios, appliances and inventions that he had made over 50 years, such as a keyboard called a clavioline, which can be heard on some Beatles songs - it was popular in the 60s. So we had all that at home.

I kind of like the idea of taking a concept and going all the way with it, even if it's not completely plausible. It's something that I like about making movies. You have a concept that maybe would not work in real life, but you can make it work in the world you're creating.

I learned to drive when I was 35. I'm driving like an old lady and very close to the wheel. I don't take many risks, and when people yell at me I say 'sorry, sorry, sorry!' I don't have road rage yet.

I don't thrive on control. I'm not looking for control. I think I get better results when I don't control things.