Documentaries Quotes

Not even my excellent training at Juilliard prepared me for my first movie role, where I played a transsexual who falls in love with a military guy in Soldier`s Girl. Here I was, this 6`3" 190-pound lanky kid from Chickasha, Oklahoma, not knowing how to begin being a woman. So I saw documentaries about transsexuals, I lost twenty-five pounds, and I put on prosthetic boobs and hips to become that character. There were times I`d look in the mirror and wonder `what am I doing to my life here? My dad is going to kill me!` But the reason I went into acting was to be able to play parts as complicated and important as this one. In playing a transsexual, I got the chance to help change people`s perspective about other people and that is a powerful thing. I`m playing a swashbuckling bandit in my next film, but I`ll always be proud of Soldier`s Girl.

(on his role in The Last King of Scotland (2006)) I did a massive amount to prepare for this. First of all I started learning Swahili, learning the accent, then I had to do study all the recording as well as all the books, tapes, documentaries. When I went to Uganda I met with his [Idi Amin`s) brother, sister, his ministers, his generals and even to the Ugandan king. I did more research for this role than any other character I`ve probably ever played.

(On his role in The Last King of Scotland (2006)) "I did a massive amount to prepare for this. First of all I started learning Swahili, learning the accent, then I had to do study all the recording as well as all the books, tapes, documentaries. When I went to Uganda I met with his brother, sister, his ministers, his generals and even to the Ugandan king. I did more research for this role than any other character I`ve probably ever played."

I discovered the 7th art at home when I was kid, through Charlie Chaplin`s movies and those of my father who shot documentaries. He was my biggest influence. So I took his camera and started shooting.

My father was an amateur filmmaker who shot 8mm color documentaries.

When I make a film, I never want the film to become a vehicle of social propaganda. If I wanted to do that, I`d make documentaries.

As a director, my goal is to be completely open. Just look at how I portray sex in my films. They`re considered shocking and obscene because I like to carefully examine human sexuality. It has to be realistic. I really like documentaries, therefore, reality is important to me when I do fiction. It is often related to my own life, my Dutch background. The art scene in Holland has always attempted to be realistic. The Dutch painters of 400 years ago were meticulously realistic. The example I always like to use is a marvelous painting by Hieronymus Bosch titled "The Prodigal Son". It is a painting of a brothel, and in the corner is a man pissing against a wall. You would never, never find something like that in an Italian, French or English painting of that epoch. The Dutch have always been more scientific, interested in detail; certainly less idealistic and more realistic. The sex scenes in Vierde man, De (1983) ("The Fourth Man") and Turks fruit (1973) {"Turkish Delight"] were based on real experiences I had or a friend had. It`s very personal. Of course, I must admit that I love to shock audiences.

Over the last year I`ve rather enjoyed making documentaries for a company called Associated Television, run by a man called David Mackenzie. And we shot a couple in Russia, one in Moscow and one in St. Petersburg ... they are called `The KGB Files`. (1998)

I don`t think of Storefront Hitchcock or Stop Making Sense as documentaries, I think of them more as performance films.

So I do tend to do documentaries where I can move in and out of them.

One of the reasons to do documentaries is that. There`s more sense of creating something, more sense of my own soul in the documentaries than in movies, because I don`t write the movies I do.

I was painting sets, working in editorial as an assistant, driving their trucks, lying that I knew how to drive a truck, and doing commercials and documentaries.

All the great novels, all the great films, all the great dramas are fictions that actually tell us the truth about us or about human nature or about human situations without being tied into the minutia of documentary events. Otherwise we might as well just make documentaries.

I never wanted to be a film director but after this experience I really loved it. I would love to do more documentaries but it`s difficult to find backing for them.

People want to see documentaries, but there`s a disconnect between that desire and the exhibitors out there. We`re not asking for charity. This could be on the 15th screen of a multiplex that would otherwise have the sixth showing of the new Harry Potter movie. Some of these films make $200 or $300 per screen.

That`s why I have always admired documentaries, because they open windows that can make you understand much better where you come from, much better than fiction, I think.

I did documentaries for maybe 10 years before I turned to fiction films.

No, I worked a lot for European television, doing documentaries in Brazil.

It`s important that we acknowledge the false in documentaries, The Film is Not Yet Rated.

All I`ve ever wanted to do is take stills of people, or take documentaries about people, and try to express to an audience how somebody lives next door. You know what I mean? Just how similar we all are as individuals.

Well, I`ve been in several films including documentaries, but the big blockbuster, I was hired as advisor to the actors, I was trying to make Jesuits out of them.

I teach at USC. I have a big class of 360 kids, only about a fifth of whom are film majors. I don`t just show the Hollywood blockbusters. I show independent films, foreign films, documentaries.