Quotes

When I see an image in my head that compels me, where there's this mystery about what's going to happen next or could happen next, I'll be intrigued. There are so many scripts that you read, and you know exactly what's going to happen, and there aren't too many where you can't tell within the first 20 pages where it's going.

Have you seen [Matthew] McConaughey in 'Unsolved Mysteries?' Even back then, it's a great performance! And he's mowing the lawn.

I used to always make art for girls. That was the thing I did for girls to like me. I did portraits, drawings, letters that formed outlines of significant things in our relationship. Art. I just used art in general. It usually worked.

I began writing fictional stories and little screenplays when I was in fifth grade.

'True Detective' would not pass The Bechdel Test.

My dad worked for a generator company and then UC Berkeley, and my mom was as a dental hygienist and then eventually a history teacher. My uncles and aunts, all of them are elementary school teachers or scientists.

I think the semantics of mini-series for a network is that it has an end.

My mom was married to a Mexican guy - a surfer - and so we'd kind of camp out on the beach the swell season.

I didn't grow up watching detective shows. I've never even seen an episode of 'CSI.'

My grandma was really sick when I was working on 'Sin Nombre' and eventually died that summer when we were finishing the film. But I was able to bring an unfinished version of the film for her to watch.

There's a lot of two-hander dialogue in 'True Detective,' and I needed to place those guys in locations where there were other levels of visual storytelling. It didn't necessarily have to move the plot forward, but it had to add tone or add to the overall feeling.

I do want to direct a movie from horseback one day.

An eight-hour movie is definitely not a two-hour movie. An eight-hour movie is really like five independent films, if you think about it, because each is usually an hour and a half. In some ways, it is like making a movie. It's just a lot more information.

So often at home in the West Village, I'm like, 'Why aren't I allowed a horse?' I would keep a horse in a stable in my apartment, and I would fit him with rubber shoes, and we'd just roll him out. If I needed to go to a meeting somewhere, I'd just get on my horse and go across town.

Collaborations aren't easy, but you definitely get something highly different than had you done it on your own. That's part of the experience.

I'd done the method bit before from, like, age 15 to 19. I was a Civil War re-enactor.

I live in Brooklyn, New York, and hail from the 'East Bay,' Oakland, CA.

My friends just make fun of me in some shape or form.

If you're directing, it doesn't really matter any more if it's going straight to TV - what matters is whether you have the resources to make a story that moves you.

Increasingly, there's much better material on television, but there's not always the time and money to make it, so you've got to make sure you make it in the right place. It also depends on time commitment; a lot of directors will make a pilot, but a series is just a whole other level of involvement.

With 'Sin Nombre,' there are parts that I wish were longer. And with 'Jane Eyre' especially, there were parts that I had to compress that I thought it would have been really nice to spend more time with - to spend with the characters.

My manager sent me the first two scripts for 'True Detective,' and I just thought they were so interesting and that the world they were depicting was so titillating to me.

I wrote my first script, which was 50 pages, at age 15. It was about two brothers in love with the same nurse while they're convalescing in a Civil War hospital.

You work with the communities to make films. And you just don't go in and take over their territory.

I was imagining films in my head and trying to gather friends together to make movies since I was a kid. I tried to do comedy skits and a horror film.

I love period pieces. But it's hard to get money to make costumed dramas, so we'll see.

Writing, for me, is an inherent part of understanding the material on a deeper level.

The problem with being a writer/director: unless you're really disciplined, you start adding projects, and you have to make time to make them. Because you have to write them... no one else is writing them for me.

My dad is from Japanese descent, my mom is from Swedish descent and, through marriages and divorces, a pretty multicultural family - a lot of Spanish speakers in the family.

I have these plants in my house that are dying, so having a robot butler to water them when I'm away would be pretty handy.

Some directors don't get involved in the cinematography and are just about story, but I'm definitely more tactile than that in terms of my involvement in the minutiae.

I think I learned discipline on 'Jane Eyre.' Charlotte Bronte's dialogue, the intellectual duel between Rochester and Jane Eyre's character, is so compelling that you didn't have to do much with the placement of cameras.

The theoretical casting part of movies is the funnest part. You really can imagine so many different versions of a story based on who's embodying it.

You need the actors to feel as much ownership of the performance and the direction of the story as you do to get the most out of everyone's potential. Part of it is just making sure we all have the same vision.

In TV, you have no time and sort of just carpet bomb the scene with as many angles as possible as quickly as possible and find it in the edit.

Tom Hooper had done 'John Adams,' and David Lynch did 'Twin Peaks.' I figured I could do eight hours of television, and I wanted to.

Obviously, a lot of TV shows are based on chronological episode viewing, and the stories are contingent upon watching it in order. Syndicated shows, you don't have to watch in order. You're just watching characters that don't change that much.

In terms of tackling different subjects, I can't really think of anything I wouldn't want to try; that's the fun of it right? Each new style brings new challenges - not that you shouldn't focus on one and master it, but it takes so long to make a film, you just want to have some variety.

When you have a script, and you're discussing what it can be, and who going to play what role, that's a kind of like a fantasy football game. You can imagine these different dream teams interpreting these characters that only exist in your head.

After 'Sin Nombre,' I just needed to take a break to go to completely different worlds.

As storytellers, you're always somehow creating history.

The anticipation-speculation that comes with a weekly schedule is a double-edged sword. Because people have more time to talk about things, some crazy ideas get a lot of attention.

New York is perfect for Tanizaki because it's filled with so many dark spaces.

'Jane Eyre' was one of those films that I was familiar with as a kid, and I always enjoyed the story.

No, ramen's not good for you. But in Japan, our favorite thing to do after drinking all night, especially in Sapporo where it's freezing cold, is to go to the ramen place at two, three in the morning.

I love the idea of 3D, but it's completely superfluous to most stories.

In a city like New York, especially for young professionals who aren't in a family situation, most people don't cook for themselves. This is the only city I've ever lived in where I eat out every night.

I have no idea what it would be like to be just one thing and speak one language. I feel enormously privileged to travel and be able to mingle and speak to people that, had I only known English, I wouldn't have been able to meet.

It's rare that you can promote a love story and feel fear in a film.

I don't storyboard, and I don't really shot list. I let the shots be determined by how the actors and I figure out the blocking in a scene, and then from there, we cover it.