I don’t want to feel what I’m creating on film has an outcome that is preordained. I don’t think of the world as a place with a divinity that shapes our end. What you try to do with film is create, as far as you possibly can, an unfolding present – a theatre in which an outcome happens and is tested. Paul Greengrass Read Quote
Whatever your style or subject matter, in the end, film-making is about searching for authenticity – that is what the audience will divine. Paul Greengrass Read Quote
Acting is many things. Acting is playing lines, of course, but it’s much more profound than that. Acting is truth-telling and trying to find the truth in a human situation, which will be sketched out by a screenwriter with all the skill that a screenwriter can do; but in the end, that’s just the map of the journey. Paul Greengrass Read Quote
I prize something that feels authentic. It’s an undefinable thing, but I know it when I see it, and I think audiences do, too. One of the reasons why ‘Bloody Sunday’ and ‘United 93’ work is because they felt real, felt truthful. Paul Greengrass Read Quote
With the dramatic canvas, I found you could still operate with the documentarist’s observational eye. Paul Greengrass Read Quote
Deep down, all directors feel like frauds – because it’s built into the nature of the job. You’re the jack of all trades and the master of none. The cameraman knows the camera, the sound man knows the sound equipment – and you? You can’t do anything: You can’t do the acting, you can’t dress the set, you don’t record the sound or shoot the images. Paul Greengrass Read Quote
I’ve seen a lot of political violence in my life. I know what it looks like. I know what it smells like. I know what motivates young men to do it. I’ve talked to them about it. I know what victims feel like, you know? I know the abominable effect it has on politics. I know how intractable it is. Paul Greengrass Read Quote
Speaking personally as a filmmaker, I think encoded in Bond are a series of values about Britain, about the world, about masculinity, about power, about the empire that I don’t share. Quite the reverse. Whereas in Bourne, I think encoded is much more scepticism. There’s an us and a them, and Bourne is an us, whereas Bond is working for them. Paul Greengrass Read Quote
Acting is many things, and one is an exercise of will. In any given scene, you’re trying to find where the drama and conflict is and then deploy the actors to play at that point of conflict with precision, control, and complete will. Paul Greengrass Read Quote
I always tell young film-makers, ‘Find the song that only you can sing.’ It doesn’t just come to you. It’s trial and error and disappointment before you find, slowly but surely, the confidence to express your film-making identity. Paul Greengrass Read Quote
