Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu Quotes

I was aware of the possible biases you could get as a commercial director, like being too concerned about the technical aspects of the form rather than anything of substance. If you keep working in commercials, you can get trapped in a very superficial way of thinking. I always used commercials as an exercise for filmmaking, like going to the gym.

Mexico City is very different now than when I grew up, but I was in the streets all the time - though I was born to a middle-class neighborhood where there weren't a lot of gangs and things. I was always comfortable.

All of us want something in life, all of us have flaws, and all of us have strengths. So, I always try to discover those things in a character and then try to expose it in one way or another.

The expected vertical line of Ikiru's narrative breaks when Kurosawa does a flash-forward in the middle of the film.

The visual architecture of 'Biutiful' is the most sophisticated of all the films I have directed.

The way I put together images is a reactive art.

I think we are all connected in this world.

Of course, there's always one theater that shows some kind of European film. Now, fortunately, you have DVDs, so it's possible to get anything you want within a few hours. In those days, it was virtually impossible to get Italian films, or German films, or whatever. So I grew up with very standard, mainstream films.

'Birdman' came from a very beautiful side of me, from a part of honesty and surrender about things.

I really try, at least consciously, not to be cynical or ironic.

I never deny a true experience in one shot.

If you stretch tragedy, it will always become comedy.

Americans easily forget that the air they breathe is the same as those in Europe or Africa or Asia; it's the same air as Jesus breathed. I would like them to remember that connection.

It's harder to make real audio than special effects audio.

One of the reasons why I agreed to do commercials is that they gave me complete freedom. I just had to have the car in it and write a story around it. I wanted to do something serious set in a Latin American country, but again, it was an exercise in style for me.

For me, the most important thing that I have to accomplish is to be a good father. That's the most difficult challenge of my life. That's the most important thing for me, more than films.

Antonio Sanchez is from Mexico City. I met him at a Pat Metheny concert. He did a solo, and I thought, 'This is an octopus man!'

If art doesn't move people, then art has failed.

When I was about to turn 50, I went into a kind of personal revision and observed my own priorities and what led those priorities in my life. And many things that, in a way, were profound.

I've learned to lose with a smile on my face. That's what the Oscar teaches you.

I think bad movies are made around the world, not just in Hollywood. There are as many bad art films in the whole world as there are bad commercial films.

Who cares about my opinions?

Films like 'Babel' can transcend the one point-of-view formula that has reigned for so long.

I have a lot of what you might call creative self-loathing - I have pretty high expectations, and they seem to consistently be higher than what I'm able to accomplish.

When you have a fresh point of view that comes from the right side of the heart, it's just so valuable. You can take it or not take it, but just that perspective can give you a lot of strength or make you reflect on a lot of things.

Too much knowledge and analysis can be paralysis.

3D is the way we experience life.

The creative process is mysterious; a conversation, a ride in the car, or a melody can trigger something.

On a transcendental level, a film is not going to be better or worse because there's a prize behind it. The work will be what it is, with or without a prize.

I always think politicians and even my dentist have more egos than actors.

That incredible bubble and high expectations built at festivals can work against a film.

I think there's nothing wrong with being fixated on superheroes when you are 7 years old, but I think there's a disease in not growing up.

The way films establish the order of scenes is very artificial.

When you have critics filing on Twitter, it leaves no time for thought and perspective.

I began to learn about the camera and the actors. That gave me a lot of the skills. At the same time, advertising gives you a lot of vices, for example, an obsession for a superficial look, but at the same time, it gives you the capacity to synthesize the story - tell a story in one minute.

I think the most experimental way to a film is to tell the story the traditional way, because everyone is doing the other thing.

I always have considered Michael Keaton to be a phenomenal actor because he navigates drama and comedy.

Nowadays, a critic has to watch 700, 800 films a year, and I know through experience, being a juror in prestigious film festivals where supposedly the best films are arriving, from twenty films maybe you see two that are good, one that is so-so, and one that is extraordinary. And the other sixteen are terrible.

We need to see ourselves projected in other members of our species to, in turn, understand ourselves. Cinema, is that mirror. It is a bridge between the others and us.

Irony is a great tool to deal with things. It's an intellectualization, a way to go above things, which can work.

All people know that they will die, but they don't actually believe it.

I think Kurosawa was one of the first storytelling geniuses who began to change the narrative structure of films.

How can [actors] learn their lines and be honest in front of 30 people and all the lights? It makes me cry sometimes. I can't understand how they can be joking with me 30 seconds before, and 40 seconds later they're giving me all this incredible feeling.

Movies started out as an extension of a magic trick, so making a spectacle is part of the game.

Ultimately, with every film I'd done before, there was a reference. They have their own uniqueness, but there was always a precedent.

I didn't have a normal academic career. I never studied cinema. I learned from life.

I define myself from a vision, from a point of view of life.

It's very healthy to be aware of your ego.

Cinema is universal, beyond flags and borders and passports.

Do you know the phrase, 'The word 'water' will not wet you?' It's one thing to write down an idea and another thing entirely to execute it.

I like so many different directors: Scorsese, Coppola, Cassavetes, Jarmusch, Gus van Sant, Woody Allen and the greats like Fellini, Bergman, Tarkovsky and among current filmmakers von Trier, Ang Lee, Wong Kar-wai.

I'm an intense person. My own vision of life has always been heavy.

We have always existed in different forms - carbon, oxygen, water, heat. Maybe Heaven is this brief period when the elements realize they're alive.

We have these ambitions that are very hard to accomplish because life puts us in our place. We have this battle with mediocrity.

I've listened to music all my life. I've always felt that music tells more stories sometimes than films, with more possibilities. Every time you listen to them, songs bring different images and moods - depending on where you are in your life, you can listen to a song, and it means something different.

When I went to university, I finally got exposed to European films, and they had a strong impact on me. I felt those films had a lot of things to say that weren't getting expressed in the films I was used to seeing.

For me, it's not about masochism to talk about death. For me, it's about observing life through death, from the last point of it.

The problem with the screenplay is that it's not literature, and it's not a film. It's a very weird, technical kind of blueprint that will be absolutely transformed into something else that is not that, you know? Honestly, a screenplay is no literature.

Actors are exposed in a way that nobody else can understand. They are subject to the likes and dislikes of people their entire life, no matter how successful they are. At the same time, in order to be liked, you have to not be yourself. So it's a very complicated human exercise - an alchemy that I have never understood.

I think movies in general should have more respect for the audience than they do. Too many films are afraid to confuse people, so all the information is given to them right away, and there's nothing left for the film to do. It ruins many stories, because everything becomes obvious and predictable. I want my films to engage people more and make them more actively involved in the story.

In families you can find the source of every human drama. It is interesting because the cell of a society, the cell of a country, the cell of humanity - everything lies in the family.

Movies become art after editing. Instead of just reproducing reality, they juxtapose images of it. That implies expression; that's art.

While 'Babel' is a foreign-language film in some countries, in others, it is a local film.

Writing is not an unknown territory for me.

The actors make the film. They're the ones that take this theoretical movie that's in your head and make it real. The success of a film is entirely on their shoulders. I admire them, because acting is such a difficult thing to do, and I personally can't understand it.

When you see things upside down, the ego can be extraordinarily funny; it's absurd. But it's tragic at the same time.

In a world where irony reigns, where you have to separate, protect and laugh at anything that is honest or has an emotional charge, I bet for catharsis. I like to invest emotionally in things. And catharsis, when it touches the emotional vein, can open the doors of even those who protect themselves.

I have a notebook, and I know what decisions will be made in pre-production. Everything is pre-determined in the pre-production period. I visually design the whole thing, and I know when things will happen.

'Biutiful' is a tough film. It doesn't make concessions to the vulgarity of light entertainment. It's not the kind of film that you see every day in the Cineplex. But as an artist, it's the thing that I needed to do.

Two words guided the making of 'Babel' for me: 'dignity' and 'compassion.' These things are normally forgotten in the making of a lot of films. Normally there is not dignity because the poor and dispossessed in a place like Morocco are portrayed as mere victims, or the Japanese are portrayed as cartoon figures with no humanity.

I think we are defined as human beings through our families, no matter what kind of family - through our relationships with parents, brothers and sisters.

I made commercials for corporations like Volkswagen and Coca-Cola, but I was always the one to write them, too, which was a very good exercise, because I learned to tell little stories.

Cinema is an infinite medium, so we should take advantage of it, I think.

'Ikiru' is existential but with a lot of tenderness.

As a Third World citizen, I always feel that I need to express my point of view. Sometimes the points of view of Third World countries are never expressed. We don't have that possibility, sometimes, to spread what we feel and how we see things.

I don't know if I have a career or not, or where it ends or it begins. I have been working, doing what I do for a long time. But my creative process has always been so tortuous.

Directing non-actors is difficult. Directing actors in a foreign language is even more difficult. Directing non-actors in a language that you yourself don't understand is the craziest thing you can possibly think of.

I am not a depressive person at all.

Good directors don't answer questions with their work. They generate debate and create discussion.

Really, I'm a neurotic perfectionist. Every single word in the script is the one that I want.

Many Mexican directors are scared to shoot in Mexico City, which is why there are many stories in Mexican cinema about little rural towns, or set a hundred years ago.

When we are looking for validation, that will never satisfy us. When we are looking for affection, for love, a little bit of that will be enough to be complete.

I see only one requirement you have to have to be a director or any kind of artist: rhythm. Rhythm, for me, is everything. Without rhythm, there's no music. Without rhythm, there's no cinema. Without rhythm, there's no architecture.

I love the three-act theory. It works and works beautifully. But you don't necessarily have to structure a story that way: Cortazar and Borges wrote in different structural styles.

It's famous that comedians have a very dark personal state of mind. I think, in my case, it's the same. The only way to get deep is to have a balance, or a counterbalance.

To direct actors is difficult. To direct actors in another language is more difficult, but directing non-actors in another language is one of the craziest things that I have done and one of the most rewarding experiences I have had.

Sometimes reading scripts is terrible.

You can better embrace life, you can enjoy it more, when you are conscious that it will end. You bite life.

I remember, the first time I saw a [Andrei] Tarkovsky film, I was shocked by it. I didn't know what to do. I was fascinated, because suddenly I realized that film could have so many more layers to it than what I had imagined before. Then others, like Kurosawa and Fellini, were like a new discovery for me, another country.

To question your own process is a necessity. If you don't question yourself, it's impossible to improve.

Now that we're poisoned with the culture of superheroes, I think it's important to laugh about it.

In the United States there's not a lot of people interested in foreign language films. Every time, it's more difficult for foreign language films to survive here.

Time starts out as a notion. But after you turn fifty, time is not a notion anymore but a fact that you start feeling clearly, and in a way, it pushes you to become present in the present.

I'm neurotic. I complain all the time. I'm a workaholic. And I'm never satisfied.

Freedom comes with a lot of responsibility. When you are by yourself, you have to develop a third eye.

Really, Mexico City has always been this big, complex monster of a city that has always had real problems and needs, and I've always found my way through it in different ways.

Look, I'm no purist - there are good superhero films, and there are bad ones.

Cannes or any other major festival is basically an animal in its own nature, creating very specific perceptions of films in a moment.

When I have been exposed to so many films that are so bad, my soul gets crushed. I just feel intoxicated.

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