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
They're always surprised with what I want to do and don't want to do. I think they're surprised I don't want to do robo-tech. I don't know, it's like they want me to have a long career. And be prolific and make big movies.
I've been wanting to make a movie about the war in Sierra Leone, specifically, for more than 15 years.
If you have something really important you want to say, you have to read your audience, I guess.
If you really want to tell someone you love them, you don't just go and blurt it out. There's a dance. And your movie does that.
I just have a hard time displaying things.
I don't really put trophies out. I don't keep trophies around my apartment.
You're always against the clock. But really just fighting for quality.
Every single substitute teacher growing up could not pronounce my name, so whenever someone pauses, I'm like, "Oh, that's me."
All I kept thinking about was, "Man, he's so relaxed onstage! I'm never going to be that relaxed! I'm clearly not meant to be in front of the camera. I'm really not meant for anything but behind the camera."
My mind is in so many different places while we're shooting. Part of it is watching the performance, part of it is watching the camera, and part of it is thinking about the stuff that we have to get that day. It's always a pleasure watching, but you also take it for granted, when you're on the actual grind, making the show.
Collaboration sometimes causes conflict, and sometimes it's easy, but the bringing together of great minds only adds.
Getting back in the directors chair - there's a sense of like doing something every year. It's not like riding a bike, you're always learning new things, you're gonna face new challenges and when you face new challenges you'll have an answer for them.
It's an important part of being a member of society to know what's happening in the world and to know where you fall in it and what you can do about it.
I'm pretty hard to impress, and I'm pretty exacting, in terms of what I want from my props department and art department. We spend many, many hours going over visual research and finding the right artists to create the material.