Good history is a question of survival. Without any past, we will deprive ourselves of the defining impression of our being. |
You can learn as much about the history from reading about the present as you can vice versa, that is learning about the present through history, which is what I do for a living. |
You need, as a historian, essential triangulation from your subject and the only way you get that triangulation is through time. |
I never, ever want to apologize for a film. If it's bad I'll say it's my fault. And that's what I can say so far in all the films that I've done, that if you don't like it, it's entirely my fault. |
To say that an artist sells out means that an artist is making a conscious choice to compromise his music, to to weaken his music for the sake of commercial gain. |
You don't work on something for six years and be blind to the myriad of other approaches. |
I grew up certain for a while that I was going to be an anthropologist, until film turned my head. |
I have made all my films for my children with the exception of my first film because my oldest daughter wasn't born when I was making the film about the Brooklyn Bridge. |
I subscribe to William Faulkner's' view that history is not just about what we were before but who we are now. |
A jazz beat is a dynamic changing rhythm. |
One of the things I really like about Ford's films is how there is always a focus on the way characters live, and not just the male heroes. |
When you are editing, the final master is Aristotle and his poetics. You might have a terrific episode, but if people are falling out because there are just too many elements in it, you have to begin to get rid of things. |
I think we too often make choices based on the safety of cynicism, and what we're lead to is a life not fully lived. Cynicism is fear, and it's worse than fear - it's active disengagement. |
I think the problem with a lot of the fusion music is that it's extremely predictable, it's a rock rhythm and the solos all play the same stuff and they play it over and over again and there's a certain musical virtuosity involved in it. |
The flame is not out, but it is flickering. |
I began to feel that the drama of the truth that is in the moment and in the past is richer and more interesting than the drama of Hollywood movies. So I began looking at documentary films. |
Wynton told us that Miles sold out, just wanted to make more money, just wanted to sell more records. I don't believe that Miles sold out but I'm not in a position to say. |
In most films music is brought in at the end, after the picture is more or less locked, to amplify the emotions the filmmaker wants you to feel. |
I record all of my music with authentic instruments in a studio before we start editing, doing many, many versions. The music shapes the film as we edit so it has an organic relationship to the content. |
History is malleable. A new cache of diaries can shed new light, and archeological evidence can challenge our popular assumptions. |