Cary Fukunaga
Cary Fukunaga
Cary Joji Fukunaga is an American film director, writer, and cinematographer. He is known for writing and directing the 2009 film Sin Nombre, the 2011 film Jane Eyre and for directing and executive producing the first season of the HBO series True Detective, for which he won the Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Directing for a Drama Series. He has received acclaim for the 2015 war drama Beasts of No Nation, in which Fukunaga was writer, director, producer, and cinematographer...
NationalityAmerican
ProfessionDirector
Date of Birth10 July 1977
CityOakland, CA
CountryUnited States of America
I want to have a nice country home one day, yeah.
I wanted to make my sophomore film as different as possible. I didn't want to be pigeonholed. I didn't want to be identifiable.
It's easy to make something avant garde. To do something in the traditional way is much more brave in the sense that you're - your technique is so much more exposed because there's not all this flashy stuff to distract the viewer.
I've certainly never been dying to go to England my entire life.
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.
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.
It's so easy for shows to be gritty and handheld and shaky and really tight in people's faces.
It's a treat and daunting to be directing someone like Judi Dench, who's made more films than I'll ever make in my lifetime.
There's nothing I find more lazy than unmotivated camerawork just to make things look interesting.
I used to do Civil War re-enacting between the ages of 15 and 19. I was part of a unit that was considered very authentic. We would source the right wools, the right buttons for the costumes. We had the right look.
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.
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.
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.
It's hard because there's a part of me that wants 'True Detective' to win every award we're nominated for. But I'm a huge fan of 'Breaking Bad' and 'Game of Thrones.'