Seeing ‘The Gospel According to St. Matthew’ was an extraordinary experience because it made me realise that all the biblical stories and images I’d ignored as a child had sunk in by osmosis. I saw that my childhood was deeply rooted inside me. Derek Cianfrance Read Quote
If you make a movie that’s close to your heart, it will be close to other people’s. Derek Cianfrance Read Quote
When I was a kid, I had two nightmares: one was nuclear war, and the other was that my parents would get a divorce; and when I was twenty, they split up, and I just felt like I needed to confront all those things that scared me as a kid – entering young adulthood and trying to have relationships. Derek Cianfrance Read Quote
You turn on the news, there’re no facts anymore. ‘Here’s what’s happening today,’ and then you cut to thirty minutes of people in little boxes, little windows, telling you their opinions on it. It seems like all the news is going on in the ticker-tape on the bottom of the news. It’s all opinion, it’s all editorial. Derek Cianfrance Read Quote
As a parent myself, I can appreciate the MPAA and what they’re supposed to do, but what happens with NC-17 is that the MPAA is basically taking away the rights of parents. They’re basically telling me that I can’t show my kids this movie if I decide they can see it. Derek Cianfrance Read Quote
Every moment is, in some ways, eternal. Once you put something into the world, it stays there. Derek Cianfrance Read Quote
My older brother gave me a cassette tape of Mr. Bungle, and I couldn’t stop listening to it. I used to drive around Colorado in a Mustang II – it was when they got away from the muscle-car Mustangs, so it was sort of old lady. I couldn’t go above 45 mph in that car, but I would drive around listening to Mr. Bungle. Derek Cianfrance Read Quote
Making a film is like making a mixtape. You’re collecting all this stuff and putting your favorite stuff into it: you have actors that you like, characters that you’re interested in, moments you want to explore, themes you want to deal with, music that you want to put in. It’s a pastiche of all these things that deal with how you see the world. Derek Cianfrance Read Quote
I feel similar to a lot of people. I don’t feel unique. So what I’m trying to do in my films is provide something for people like me, but also a collection of scenes that instigate. Derek Cianfrance Read Quote
