Gus Van Sant Quotes

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Gus Van Sant

Profession : Director

Birth : July 24, 1952

I was originally a painter, and I made films sort of as an extension of that, and then I started to try to make dramatic films because the early films were experimental films.

Gus Van Sant

If you put up posters around town for high-school kids, high-school kids will come. If you're casting politicians, you can't put up posters and have politicians come down.

Gus Van Sant

Because I didn't have brothers, I was always interested in the kids down the street that had four brothers in their family, so I became one of them - but it was not my family.

Gus Van Sant

I've always been attracted to temporary families.

Gus Van Sant

The biopic also wasn't a form that I necessarily believed in, because you can never really get it right, you know? It's also a form that's very popular - the straight-ahead biopic.

Gus Van Sant

There are all kinds of ways that people present their films, but that's kind of a good feeling, if you can make it seem like the characters are really there.

Gus Van Sant

Usually when I read something, first of all I'm looking for the story and then when I reread it, I'm sort of checking every part of it to see if every scene is necessary.

Gus Van Sant

Sometimes, the people who are helping you can drop the ball.

Gus Van Sant

If it were up to the executives, they probably wouldn't have directors at all.

Gus Van Sant

I had never had a positive leading character - somebody that wasn't an antihero, or who wasn't more of a guy that you're supposed to be on the side of.

Gus Van Sant

I had wanted to do a comedy.

Gus Van Sant

Even if you try to copy a film shot by shot, you still can't. It's still your own film.

Gus Van Sant

Well, I want to do everything in sort of a documentary style, ever since I started in the '80s.

Gus Van Sant

I've always been interested in how to present something that relates to our reality - which is not really... I don't even know if documentary itself does as good a job. It has its own problems in trying to get at the reality of the situation.

Gus Van Sant

The things that inform student culture are created and controlled by the unseen culture, the sociological aspects of our climbing culture, our 'me' generation, our yuppie culture, our SUVs, or, you know, shopping culture, our war culture.

Gus Van Sant