Guy Maddin
Guy Maddin
Guy Maddin, CM OMis a Canadian screenwriter, director, author, cinematographer and film editor of both features and short films, as well as an installation artist, from Winnipeg, Manitoba. His most distinctive quality is his penchant for recreating the look and style of silent or early-sound-era films. Since completing his first film in 1985, Maddin has become one of Canada's most well-known and celebrated film-makers...
ProfessionDirector
Date of Birth28 February 1956
goes-on world want
If I hope to survive, I have to acknowledge the natural selection that goes on when film stocks and cameras are eliminated from the world. And film viewers won't want to watch the same thing over and over again from me.
years want film
If I want to keep making films for a few more years, I probably should be willing to adapt. I've sort of evolved into the filmmaker that I am because of natural selection anyway.
moon shooting want
I went to see Chicago after I finished shooting, and say what you want about it, but that thing was so meticulously planned. It was planned like NASA planned its trips to the moon. It made me feel like some sort of horrible dilettante.
hands want be-kind
The spirit of my films... I always want them to be kind of contrarian. Meticulous on the one hand, but unbelievably sloppy and careless on the other. I guess that's what you get anyway, if you're not planning very much.
trying goes-on want
I just respect audiences to understand that that's what goes on in movies. I just try to make movies that respect the intelligence of the audience. Respect that they understand that the narrator is always unreliable and respect that they understand that the medium can do whatever it wants.
exactly knew sound stomach
It's all Isabella, and she knew exactly what that stomach should sound like for some reason,
horror whatever
Whatever I do next, it'll be a horror film.
people trying persons
In many relationships that I've had people just try to own the other person.
attitude devil may
I'm starting to frighten myself, because I'm backsliding into my devil-may-care attitude. I'm sure it's going to catch up with me.
thinking half-days firsts
I'm a nervous wreck. If it's a 20-day shoot, at lunchtime on the first day, I'm thinking "Only 19 and a half days to go... I can make it!"
feet space long
I've usually never felt comfortable shooting until things were kind of claustrophobic, but ballet dancers need a lot of space, so the sets that I designed had to be big. Normally, I'd design a kitchen that was half the size of a normal kitchen, just to make everything feel kind of womb-like, but the kitchen in a ballet would have to be like 100 feet wide and just as long.
moving dancer ballet
Making the ballet really taught me how to get things moving. Ballet dancers don't stand still.
black-and-white looks static
I guess to the outside observer, all my movies look like musty old black-and-white artifacts, but my earlier movies had been more static and tableaux-ish.
hard-work people feel-good
It feels good to finally stand on top of vanquished sloth, and actually impress some people as a hard worker.