I'm learning in my old age that the only thing you can do to keep your sanity is to stay in the moment.
Willem DafoeThe truth is, if you're around long enough, you have a story about everyone. But it's best to keep your mouth shut sometimes.
Willem DafoeI don't worry so much about the audience. I want them very much to be involved and enjoy the movie, but I try to just inhabit the character in a full way, where I can create a personal stake.
Willem DafoeIn films you do a scene, you play around with it and unless you're doing a lot of reshooting, which no one has the luxury to do, you deal with the problem for a day and then you move on. On some level, it never allows you to go very deep into what performing is about.
Willem DafoeI like the idea of sitting in a theater with a bunch of people. With technology now, people are getting more and more isolated. I like the community coming around the story. You don't have that with a DVD. People go home, they're tired from work, they can turn it off. It doesn't make you commit the same way, if you can control the movie. More difficult movies, it's too easy to turn them off. All the time, I see movies I know if I had seen it on DVD, I wouldn't have hung with it. If you see it on the screen, you hang with it and it pays off better than a movie you can easily sit through on DVD.
Willem Dafoe