Michel Gondry Quotes

You cannot do everything you want with the 3D camera, it's too big, and the digital quality of those cameras is a little bit limiting. With film, you have a lot more subtly, like with highlights and color. In terms of sharpness they (both formats) are very close; but in terms of nuance, of color and contrast, film is far superior.

I think the purpose of test screenings is different for the studio and for the filmmaker. For the studio, I think they want to know whether the film works or not.

People always say there is competition in nature, but I think that because we are human, it's not only competition. Because we are human we have something other than competition - sharing, helping others, or being oneself. Competition is really kind of ugly.

When I was young, I would stay in my backyard and I would create roads and tunnels and systems. My uncle had a sawmill, and we had all sorts of pieces of wood, and we'd create a city. I truly believe that kids enjoy the box better than the car or the toy that's inside. So many times during Christmas, watching a kid, or even myself... There is excitement toward your toy, but then you put the toy on the side and something is created with the package.

I like actors who just are who they are, with a little bit of qualification to adapt to their character. But mostly they just use their own personality to embody the character.

I don't want to compare myself to him - I don't want people to see me as this great genius - but when I see Charlie Chaplin's movies there is a combination of drama, naivety and social meaning that I can see in myself, at a different level.

I don't mock things, which makes me more vulnerable to mockery myself. If you're cynical, you're protected from mockery. But I have to be nice. I don't think I have irony. A sense of humour, yes, but not irony.

I don't like those shows where people get eliminated every week, and then they have to get meaner to survive.

In the '90s movies were so serious, and so stylistic and slick that I could not identify with them.

All these gadgets, the phone and the computer, they expose the inside of your brain in a way that's bad.

I want to explore new ideas and put myself in a place where I can finish a project that is more unusual or that doesn't seem doable.

Since I was a kid, I've liked to see how things are done. Sometimes when you see how things are done, it's like watching a 'making of' within the story. You see the physical aspect, the construction of things.

Competition impedes creativity because you present yourself in a way that's going to been seen by somebody outside of you. You're not very much yourself and it limits you.

Every great idea is on the verge of being stupid.

When I shoot actors, I have that dilemma. I want the actor to be good, and sometimes I have to push them to a place that isn't pleasant. I always think: 'Is it worth doing for the sake of the movie?' But I have to remember the bigger picture.

Perhaps my favourite story is 'Le Passe-Muraille' by Marcel Ayme. It's about a guy who wakes up with a weird faculty that means he can walk through walls. He's a very shy clerk, and he uses it to get revenge, or vent his frustration.

The problem when you edit a film together, when you shoot a film, you are drawn into the moment. You want each moment to be special and full of life.

If I have a good dream and I wake up happy. When I have an idea, I feel happy. Sometimes achievement and relationships can make me happy. I have a son and to see him grow - he's 22 now - that makes me happy.

You need philosophy. It sounds a little pompous but I think when you direct a film, the only way to find a response to the questions you keep asking yourself is to have a philosophy.

In a way, putting actors deep into this sort of complicated universe frees them from thinking about who they should be. They just are somebody.

The competition is not really friendly or peaceful. It leads to oppression in some ways.

I'm just saying to everyone. The director does not direct the trailer. It's an edited version that takes so many moments of the movie, sometimes it's not even in the movie. The director does the movie. So don't judge the director based on the trailer. Please.

Orange is an underrated color, it's the second most underrated color after yellow.

I like to use a bit of chaos when I shoot. I think it may be something from the way I shot my first film - I was very scared, of course, and I prepared everything, I wanted to make sure that the characters did the right thing at the right time on the storyboard. But then I realised that in life, there is so much more than what you can predict or write in advance, that when you shoot the story, it's good to leave some gaps where you lose control. I think this combination of chaos and organisation gives a kind of quality.

I think it's a problem when journalists have the title of their article before they do the interview, because it biases the way they conduct it.

I have a video store next to my apartment in Paris, and they still have most of their videos on VHS. A lot of people think Be Kind Rewind is set in the past because they just wipe this reality out of their head, but it is true that there are a lot of movies that don't exist on DVD. But I'm not like a big movie buff.

I was sort of lazy at school, but I realize I still have something to bring to the subject which is comforting. I feel I am not as stupid as I thought I was.

Sometimes, when people use too much blue screen in movies, the actors don't look credible, because they have their own opinion of what the thing will look like, and each person has a different opinion.

If you take a child from South Africa and you put them in Boston, they're going to speak with a Boston accent. And so, that's a way to see the world as everybody is equal, not as a result of politics, but as human beings.

I had a lot of encouragement and tolerance from my parents, but I also have many friends who didn't get that from their parents and in a way they have more strength from spending years where nobody believed in them.

I'm going to work with Dan Clowes. After Charlie Kaufman, it's hard to fill up the gap. It's hard to find somebody who... A lot of writers, I can clearly see the desire of succeeding before the desire of expressing themselves. Sometimes people get upset when you want to be different. You were talking about "whimsical," which is a nice word. But sometimes they use the word "quirky" in the pejorative sense. I get frustrated, because they feel like I'm doing whatever I want, and there is no ground, and I don't really care. They feel it's cynical. But I don't think I have any cynicism in me.

My father had a Super 8 camera when I was a kid and sometimes he would use it. I did some animation with it. I did a lot of flipbooks.

I don't like to put people in a competition to defeat the other.

It's part of my job to maintain the emotional reality and the naturalism even when the atmosphere is contrived.

If you're not grown up enough to understand that a trailer is not done by the director, then fine. Judge the movie from the trailer.

I'm always excited to work with actors.

It's a very American thing that everything has to be a business. Americans think... I like America, or I would not be here. There are great qualities to this country. But this sense that everything has to be a business is sometimes overwhelming.

I'm part of the consumer culture... I'm just using the space I am given to express something that is out of the space so I'm part of the consumer system but I'm advocating stepping out. Which is a contradiction but I could be part of he consumer system and say, 'let's consume even more.'

The MTV Video Awards were never about the video, but about the song. Most of the time it was just to glorify people for the wrong reason.

It's very hard to say I'm surrealist. It's like saying I'm poetic. It's not something you want necessarily to be aware of.

I like collaboration, I like to incorporate other people's ideas [and] that's what happens when you do a big movie. Unless you're called Stanley Kubrick and you do an independent movie for like $200 million.

The idea that competition is pointless is really something that speaks to me, especially in America where competition is really prominent and very overwhelming, and it doesn't bring the best out in you because what's going to push you is to bring others down.

My goal was to show that even if people work in a garage or a supermarket, they have very funny things to say. We never hear their voices.

I've dreamed a lot, but i'm not a very good sleeper.

I would define myself as being naive and perverse at the same time. And I think that if that is consistent it will make the tone consistent.

I shoot people in a way that makes the audience feel equal to them. And it's hard to express and it's hard to execute but I think it works on every level - the choice of the material the choice of the actor, my relationship with the actor, and so on.

I'm just thinking of 2001, which I think is the most expensive independent film ever made - which is great, someday I hope I will do one. But I know the parameters when I got onto this project - I have to take care of everyone, make sure that they are all on board, and this process interests me.

I don't like movies that are too manipulative. A lot of movies thrive on really pushing your buttons and making you hate the villain.