Gus Van Sant quotes

Gus Van Sant is an American director, screenwriter, and producer, widely recognized for his work on independent and mainstream films. Known for movies such as "Good Will Hunting," "Milk," and "My Own Private Idaho," his storytelling often explores social issues and marginalized characters. He is considered one of the most influential contemporary filmmakers in American cinema. Here are 61 of his quotes:

I was once a shameless, full-time dope fiend.

Gus Van Sant

Free time keeps me going.

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

I'm thinking of remaking 'Psycho' again. Doing a third remake. The idea this time is to really change it - we're talking about doing a punk rocker setting.

Gus Van Sant

Modern-day cinema takes the form of a sermon. You don't get to think, you only get to receive information.

Gus Van Sant

For all the boredom the straight life brings, it's not too bad.

Gus Van Sant

I'm normally drawn to something I haven't done and seen before.

Gus Van Sant

When you get to be 23, 24 or 25, you start to freeze up and become an adult.

Gus Van Sant

I think that in some cases, I've made films that have a sentimental quality, at least as part of the film.

Gus Van Sant

I have my ideas of what a good documentary is, but drama is a different animal because you're arranging everything.

Gus Van Sant

I'm usually trying to react to what the actors are coming up with. And then the environment, and then the story.

Gus Van Sant

Once you're directing, you're kind of in a certain mode, where you're taking whatever is on the page and forming it into the film that you think it might want to be. So whether it's my writing or not, I still try to work with it in the same way.

Gus Van Sant

There is a common theme, though, in the stories I have told, which are usually associations of characters or families that are formed outside of a family circle.

Gus Van Sant

Now the music industry is sort of like a Craigslist venture, right? Where you're making your own records and selling them online.

Gus Van Sant

The rules of suspense are that you do know, and you just don't know when. In the Hitchcock rules of suspense, you are supposed to know that there is a bomb on the bus that might blow up, and then it becomes very tense - but if you don't know that there's a bomb and it just blows up, then it's just a surprise.

Gus Van Sant

Wong Kar-Wai is a really great inspiration. He's always referred to as the Jimi Hendrix of filmmaking.

Gus Van Sant

I've always been attracted to temporary families.

Gus Van Sant

Yeah, I try to be really calm.

Gus Van Sant

The artist himself is actually the subject in everything after, say, 1900. Eventually, art becomes so removed from the community that you have to know about the artist before you can even look at the painting, because there is a conceptual idea going on.

Gus Van Sant

With 'Good Will Hunting,' Miramax made certain the recruited audience wasn't expecting to laugh at Robin Williams like they normally do. From my limited experience, you can really blow test screenings by conducting them in the wrong way.

Gus Van Sant

The dark comedies tend to be in a non-releasable area. There can be romantic comedies. There can be dramas. But there's no 'dark comedy' inbox for the advertising.

Gus Van Sant

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

Gus Van Sant