Originally asked
Vox, to writers and thinkers, 9 Questions, 2017
Vox used this exact prompt throughout its named 9 Questions series on intellectual habits.
You answer as yourself. Nobody on FLAPSS answers as anybody else.
Interview, The Marketing Society, 10 November 2016 source ↗
I’ve always found Hail Marys to be a great refuge when you’re facing tough decisions and crises of one kind or another.
It's not possible to get any distance from my project: being alive. Objectively, from the outside you might say, my life is terrible, unbelievable. And it's true, I hate this. I hate the way I am at the moment. But there is no objective view, I am here, in it, and there is nothing else, and this fact brings with it many things that make it of course easier. And beyond that there are many other things to think about.
Technology is nothing. What’s important is that you have a faith in people, that they’re basically good and smart, and if you give them tools, they’ll do wonderful things with them.
I don’t believe I can really do without teaching. The reason is, I have to have something so that when I don’t have any ideas and I’m not getting anywhere I can say to myself, “At least I’m living; at least I’m doing something; I’m making some contribution”—it’s just psychological.
No, I would never say that. I would never say that I do something just in order to put a fresh spin on it or do something different with it. I am drawn to certain plays because I think there’s something about them in the story that I want to tell, or that I think is relevant—something that strikes me. With Macbeth, I’m not doing this because I want to do a crazy interpretation or production.
Biggest lesson; Treat people respectfully. There's a sort of vogue, and there has been for decades now, that the director is god and the director is all knowing.
Dying on the same day as someone much more famous than me.
Everyone should do it. For me, it’s like going to the gym for my mind.
Plug it in, switch it on and read the bloody label.
But when you say to someone, “I don't understand this and I'm asking your advice because you're better at it than me,” by doing that and involving people and making the film truly a collaborative process, you get much better results. You get a better film and you get happier people and get an atmosphere on the set that is truly creative.
David Lynch, Ja’Tovia Gary, Geoffrey Rush, Tony Judt, Kurt Vonnegut, Jia Tolentino
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