1) The Unveiling of You – Darren Aronofsky (Requiem for a Dream, Black Swan)
“If you want to be a filmmaker, the best think you can bring to the world is your own story…Reach deep into your own personal stuff, your own personal joys and sadness and pain and struggle and victories and share them. That’s what we want to see.”
2) Just Get The Right Actors - John Frankenheimer (Black Sunday)
“Casting is 65 percent of directing.”
3) Don’t Sell Yourself Out – Alexander Payne (About Schmidt, The Descendants)
“To really learn filmmaking, you must learn screenwriting…Most importantly, if you want to direct, never accept money to write a screenplay. Never pitch and never accept money to write a screenplay. When you finish writing, and they say, ‘Yeah, it’s okay…‘ Yeah… they start making you jump through hoops…forever. That’s the most important advice I can give to directors. Never write for pay.”
4) Newsflash: Great Films Aren’t Easy to Make - Lee Daniels (Precious)
“My advice is filmmakers who are trying to make really challenging films is to embrace the struggle required to make them. All great films come from struggle. People said ‘Monster’s Ball’ shouldn’t be made and even asked why I was working on such a film. But struggle puts hair on your chest. You fight so hard for these little movies that sometimes you feel like you must be crazy. Sometimes I think, ‘Why don’t I just buy into the system? Get myself a house and a decent car?’ But when I see the result like ‘The Woodsman’ and the effect the films have on people, it makes me feel like I’m not crazy, that I’m not alone, and that people do appreciate them.”
5) Find The Gist – Francis Ford Coppola (Godfather Trilogy)
“When you make a movie, always try to discover what the theme of the movie is in one or two words. Every time I made a film, I always knew what I thought the theme was, the core, in one word. In “The Godfather,” it was succession. In “The Conversation,” it was privacy. In “Apocalypse,” it was morality.
6) No Journey Is Made Alone – Stephen Spielberg (Schindler’s List, War Horse)
“When I was a kid, there was no collaboration, it’s you with a camera bossing your friends around. But as an adult, filmmaking is all about appreciating the talents of the people you surround yourself with and knowing you could never have made any of these films by yourself.”
7) Fill It Up – Alfred Hitchcock (Psycho, Vertigo)
“I don’t understand why we have to experiment with film. I think everything should be done on paper. A musician has to do it, a composer. He puts a lot of dots down and beautiful music comes out. And I think that students should be taught to visualize. That`s the one thing missing in all this. The one thing that the student has got to do is to learn that there is a rectangle up there – a white rectangle in a theater – and it has to be filled.”
8) Be A Little Crazy - Kevin Smith (Clerks)
You have to have this reasonable amount of unreasonability to even become a filmmaker. Because reasonability dictates, like, ‘Hey man, you’re not from Los Angeles, you don’t work near a movie studio, your not born into this business, you can’t be a filmmaker, that’s for other people.’ You have to have this reasonable degree of unreasonability. You have to be like, ‘No, it doesn’t have to be that way.’
9) A Smorgasbord of Inspiration – Nicholas Winding Refn (Drive)
“Directing is…just inspiring everyone else to give their best, and then you put your name on it. Get everyone inspired and pumped and get them to see the vision of your film, and then you’re ready.”
10) Many Hats to Wear – Billy Wilder (Sunset Blvd., Some Like It Hot)
“A director must be a policeman, a midwife, a psychoanalyst, a sycophant and a bastard.”
But let’s take it slow: what does Jane Eyre do right? For one, the strong willed heroine Charlotte Bronte presents is a breath of fresh air – even for the 21st century. Jane does not take any stuff – blunt honesty and strong spirits is the name of her game. It might be more normal to see the ‘strong woman’ type in entertainment today, but this well-rounded female character is essential for women for any era. The writing is absolutely enthralling – Bronte chooses words that zooms the reader right into the scene. The characterization and diction is wonderful, a symphony of gorgeous words.
