Gus Van Sant Trying Quotations

Even if you try to copy a film shot by shot, you still can't. It's still your own film.

When I grew up in the '60s, we were actually dominated by this, you know, sort of conforming '50s culture, even though we were like trying to express our own culture, like, the dominant culture was the thing that was forming us. And I think that that's true today.

I'm usually trying to react to what the actors are coming up with. And then the environment, and then the story.

Once you're directing, you're kind of in a certain mode, where you're taking whatever is on the page and forming it into the film that you think it might want to be. So whether it's my writing or not, I still try to work with it in the same way.

I've always been interested in how to present something that relates to our reality - which is not really... I don't even know if documentary itself does as good a job. It has its own problems in trying to get at the reality of the situation.

Yeah, I try to be really calm.

Free time keeps me going. It's just something that's always been a part of my life. I was originally a painter, and I made films sort of as an extension of that, and then I started to try to make dramatic films because the early films were experimental films.

I try to get to know the actors as much as I can. I feel like I'm friends with them for starters and for a week or two, we rehearse when they're getting the costumes together.

I try to shoot the first rehearsal because people are more spontaneous. People in real life don't really know where they are going to be either positioning themselves or how they will be saying their words. When people goof during the first take, it usually looks realistic.

As I do with most films, I try and find some music that you could use throughout, not just a sampling of lots of different artists.