Top 100 Cary Fukunaga Quotes
#1. 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.
Cary Fukunaga
#2. I enjoy setting the scene and coming up with interesting frames. 'True Detective' was a very hands-on set.
Cary Fukunaga
#3. Some directors don't get involved in the cinematography and are just about story, but I'm definitely more tactile than that in terms of my involvement in the minutiae.
Cary Fukunaga
#4. Collaboration sometimes causes conflict, and sometimes it's easy, but the bringing together of great minds only adds.
Cary Fukunaga
#5. Ed Norton is probably one of the smartest people I've ever met.
Cary Fukunaga
#6. I've certainly never been dying to go to England my entire life.
Cary Fukunaga
#7. I live in Brooklyn, New York, and hail from the 'East Bay,' Oakland, CA.
Cary Fukunaga
#8. I used to do Civil War re-enacting between the ages of 15 and 19. I was part of a unit that was considered very authentic. We would source the right wools, the right buttons for the costumes. We had the right look.
Cary Fukunaga
#9. Casting directors I don't think are the best in Mexico at street casting. Whereas, I think, in New York and in L.A., that's more common; not so in Mexico. So it's up to you as a director in a lot of ways to go out and do that.
Cary Fukunaga
#10. I definitely pay attention to details. I think one of the hardest things about making a movie is that it can be scrutinized over and over again. If anything just isn't right, it's going to take you out of the film.
Cary Fukunaga
#11. On 'Sin Nombre,' Adriano Goldman and I improvised a lot of things on-site. We were working with untrained actors, and you can't really block a scene in a traditional way.
Cary Fukunaga
#13. I have tremendous faith that there will be greater films to come.
Cary Fukunaga
#14. I wrote my first script, which was 50 pages, at age 15. It was about two brothers in love with the same nurse while they're convalescing in a Civil War hospital.
Cary Fukunaga
#15. I'm never more miserable than when I write, and never more happy than having finished and having it sitting in front of me.
Cary Fukunaga
#16. After 'Sin Nombre,' I just needed to take a break to go to completely different worlds.
Cary Fukunaga
#17. I think about a Richard Avedon photo series, the kind of faces he gets of real people, which I find so captivating. Fellini was also great in filling his films with this ambiance, this environment, sometimes chaotic and carnival-like, but people's faces were always amazing.
Cary Fukunaga
#18. Obviously, a lot of TV shows are based on chronological episode viewing, and the stories are contingent upon watching it in order. Syndicated shows, you don't have to watch in order. You're just watching characters that don't change that much.
Cary Fukunaga
#19. My friends just make fun of me in some shape or form.
Cary Fukunaga
#20. Collaborations aren't easy, but you definitely get something highly different than had you done it on your own. That's part of the experience.
Cary Fukunaga
#21. I think the only reason people use PCs is because they have to. Mac is the most streamlined computer there is. I started using the Mac in college because I was doing editing, and they were the only computers we could use to do that.
Cary Fukunaga
#22. There are elements to the 19th century which just don't work for contemporary audiences.
Cary Fukunaga
#23. I wanted to make my sophomore film as different as possible. I didn't want to be pigeonholed. I didn't want to be identifiable.
Cary Fukunaga
#24. I think I have this field around me that makes electronics work bad. It's not like an entropy thing; it happens very quickly.
Cary Fukunaga
#25. I'm not a very sentimental person, so you're not going to find schmaltzy scenes in my movies.
Cary Fukunaga
#26. My dad is from Japanese descent, my mom is from Swedish descent and, through marriages and divorces, a pretty multicultural family - a lot of Spanish speakers in the family.
Cary Fukunaga
#27. The anticipation-speculation that comes with a weekly schedule is a double-edged sword. Because people have more time to talk about things, some crazy ideas get a lot of attention.
Cary Fukunaga
#28. I'm not Mexican, and I'm not Central American. I'm from California.
Cary Fukunaga
#29. If you have something really important you want to say, you have to read your audience, I guess.
Cary Fukunaga
#30. It's nice to represent to other people in the world that Americans actually do know what's happening in the world, can speak other languages and are conscientious. The perception quite often is that we don't know what's beyond our county line.
Cary Fukunaga
#31. Everyone wants to be liked, so of course you want critical acclaim. After that, box office acclaim isn't bad. More than anything I think you have to try and make something you're proud of.
Cary Fukunaga
#32. I'm better suited to be a director, I think. I see myself as the general author. I hate the word 'auteur,' because it sounds so solitary when filmmaking is anything but solitary.
Cary Fukunaga
#33. 'True Detective' would not pass The Bechdel Test.
Cary Fukunaga
#34. Sundance took me on my first film and from there sort of launched my career.
Cary Fukunaga
#36. I think that one of the most exciting things about making films is the sort of reaching out to the world. It's as an ambassador. You realize the more you travel that you are a cultural ambassador for your own country. You never become more patriotic than you do living abroad.
Cary Fukunaga
#37. It's easy to make something avant garde. To do something in the traditional way is much more brave in the sense that you're - your technique is so much more exposed because there's not all this flashy stuff to distract the viewer.
Cary Fukunaga
#38. Your movie should lull people into a place of openness and vulnerability. If it is just a diatribe, it's never going to work.
Cary Fukunaga
#39. I think any character has to be well-rounded, whether they are male or female - they have to be complex and make choices that maybe we don't agree with, you know? I guess that's what makes them human.
Cary Fukunaga
#40. I don't think I'd ever write anything that I don't also direct just because it's so hard and painful to write as it is.
Cary Fukunaga
#41. When you have a script, and you're discussing what it can be, and who going to play what role, that's a kind of like a fantasy football game. You can imagine these different dream teams interpreting these characters that only exist in your head.
Cary Fukunaga
#42. It's so easy for shows to be gritty and handheld and shaky and really tight in people's faces.
Cary Fukunaga
#44. 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.
Cary Fukunaga
#45. I don't really put trophies out. I don't keep trophies around my apartment.
Cary Fukunaga
#47. You're always against the clock. But really just fighting for quality.
Cary Fukunaga
#48. In TV, you have no time and sort of just carpet bomb the scene with as many angles as possible as quickly as possible and find it in the edit.
Cary Fukunaga
#49. I have these plants in my house that are dying, so having a robot butler to water them when I'm away would be pretty handy.
Cary Fukunaga
#50. Levity, you need levity to feel anything. You need to laugh before you cry. I think films that take themselves too seriously without any levity are missing an important ingredient to the potential emotional impact of their stories.
Cary Fukunaga
#51. I want to have a nice country home one day, yeah.
Cary Fukunaga
#52. You need the actors to feel as much ownership of the performance and the direction of the story as you do to get the most out of everyone's potential. Part of it is just making sure we all have the same vision.
Cary Fukunaga
#53. I'm definitely sensitive to the idea of exploitation. You don't want to glamorize certain things.
Cary Fukunaga
#54. I used to always make art for girls. That was the thing I did for girls to like me. I did portraits, drawings, letters that formed outlines of significant things in our relationship. Art. I just used art in general. It usually worked.
Cary Fukunaga
#55. When I was 20, I was living in the Alps, snowboarding and studying political science. I blew out my knee, and I began to realize my days in the sport were numbered; the reality was I would never be a pro.
Cary Fukunaga
#56. My dad worked for a generator company and then UC Berkeley, and my mom was as a dental hygienist and then eventually a history teacher. My uncles and aunts, all of them are elementary school teachers or scientists.
Cary Fukunaga
#57. I'd done the method bit before from, like, age 15 to 19. I was a Civil War re-enactor.
Cary Fukunaga
#58. I began writing fictional stories and little screenplays when I was in fifth grade.
Cary Fukunaga
#59. Living in New York, I get excited by the idea of working in a different medium. And it's pretty frightening because whatever skills it takes to make a good piece of theater seem mysterious to me.
Cary Fukunaga
#60. In a city like New York, especially for young professionals who aren't in a family situation, most people don't cook for themselves. This is the only city I've ever lived in where I eat out every night.
Cary Fukunaga
#61. An eight-hour movie is definitely not a two-hour movie. An eight-hour movie is really like five independent films, if you think about it, because each is usually an hour and a half. In some ways, it is like making a movie. It's just a lot more information.
Cary Fukunaga
#62. With 'Sin Nombre,' there are parts that I wish were longer. And with 'Jane Eyre' especially, there were parts that I had to compress that I thought it would have been really nice to spend more time with - to spend with the characters.
Cary Fukunaga
#64. There's nothing I find more lazy than unmotivated camerawork just to make things look interesting.
Cary Fukunaga
#65. I love the idea of 3D, but it's completely superfluous to most stories.
Cary Fukunaga
#66. 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.
Cary Fukunaga
#67. I have a really good relationship with Focus Features; we had a wonderful time working together on 'Sin Nombre.'
Cary Fukunaga
#68. Tom Hooper had done 'John Adams,' and David Lynch did 'Twin Peaks.' I figured I could do eight hours of television, and I wanted to.
Cary Fukunaga
#69. The problem with being a writer/director: unless you're really disciplined, you start adding projects, and you have to make time to make them. Because you have to write them ... no one else is writing them for me.
Cary Fukunaga
#70. My ideas tend to be either really big in terms of like, the logistics, or really small.
Cary Fukunaga
#71. 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.
Cary Fukunaga
#72. I was imagining films in my head and trying to gather friends together to make movies since I was a kid. I tried to do comedy skits and a horror film.
Cary Fukunaga
#73. New York is perfect for Tanizaki because it's filled with so many dark spaces.
Cary Fukunaga
#74. 'Sin Nombre' was almost like the adolescent version of 'Jane Eyre.' 'Jane Eyre' sort of picks up where 'Sin Nombre' ends. It's about this girl who starts off on her own at her lowest point of despair, and she figures out how she got there.
Cary Fukunaga
#75. Going from having an Atari to a laptop changed everything. It allows me to work anywhere I want and send my work home - I can work anywhere in the world.
Cary Fukunaga
#76. I've written immense love letters that are supposed to be opened over days at a time.
Cary Fukunaga
#77. Have you seen McConaughey in 'Unsolved Mysteries?' Even back then, it's a great performance! And he's mowing the lawn.
Cary Fukunaga
#78. I don't really see a huge divide between filmmaking and television. In the end, a lot of people are going to be watching this stuff on their laptops and their iPhones anyway. So, it doesn't really matter where it comes from, as long as the stories get told.
Cary Fukunaga
#79. It's hard because there's a part of me that wants 'True Detective' to win every award we're nominated for. But I'm a huge fan of 'Breaking Bad' and 'Game of Thrones.'
Cary Fukunaga
#80. I don't storyboard, and I don't really shot list. I let the shots be determined by how the actors and I figure out the blocking in a scene, and then from there, we cover it.
Cary Fukunaga
#82. I didn't grow up watching detective shows. I've never even seen an episode of 'CSI.'
Cary Fukunaga
#83. My manager sent me the first two scripts for 'True Detective,' and I just thought they were so interesting and that the world they were depicting was so titillating to me.
Cary Fukunaga
#84. It's pretty awesome to see people dressed up in period clothing and running around on horses and in carriages and all that kind of thing. Part of the fun of making a period film is just that playfulness. It's just like make believe when you're a child except you get to do it for a real job.
Cary Fukunaga
#85. I have no idea what it would be like to be just one thing and speak one language. I feel enormously privileged to travel and be able to mingle and speak to people that, had I only known English, I wouldn't have been able to meet.
Cary Fukunaga
#86. So often at home in the West Village, I'm like, 'Why aren't I allowed a horse?' I would keep a horse in a stable in my apartment, and I would fit him with rubber shoes, and we'd just roll him out. If I needed to go to a meeting somewhere, I'd just get on my horse and go across town.
Cary Fukunaga
#87. My mom was married to a Mexican guy - a surfer - and so we'd kind of camp out on the beach the swell season.
Cary Fukunaga
#88. You only have so much time in life so everything you do needs to mean something to you.
Cary Fukunaga
#89. As storytellers, you're always somehow creating history.
Cary Fukunaga
#90. I have aspirations of making a big, historical epic. I don't know if I'll ever get the money to do it ...
Cary Fukunaga
#91. I'm clearly not meant to be in front of the camera. I'm really not meant for anything but behind the camera.
Cary Fukunaga
#92. In terms of tackling different subjects, I can't really think of anything I wouldn't want to try; that's the fun of it right? Each new style brings new challenges - not that you shouldn't focus on one and master it, but it takes so long to make a film, you just want to have some variety.
Cary Fukunaga
#93. Even on my films, I always collaborate with the actors. That's a given. I think you need that. You need the actors to feel as much ownership of the performance and the direction of the story as you do, to get the most out of everyone's potential.
Cary Fukunaga
#94. I think I learned discipline on 'Jane Eyre.' Charlotte Bronte's dialogue, the intellectual duel between Rochester and Jane Eyre's character, is so compelling that you didn't have to do much with the placement of cameras.
Cary Fukunaga
#95. 'Jane Eyre' was one of those films that I was familiar with as a kid, and I always enjoyed the story.
Cary Fukunaga
#96. 'City of God' and 'Slumdog Millionaire' are both films that I really like, but they are stylistically the opposite of what I wanted to do.
Cary Fukunaga
#97. I want to be happy while I make movies and not just do things just to work. I want to do things I spend years on.
Cary Fukunaga
#98. No, ramen's not good for you. But in Japan, our favorite thing to do after drinking all night, especially in Sapporo where it's freezing cold, is to go to the ramen place at two, three in the morning.
Cary Fukunaga
#99. There's a lot of two-hander dialogue in 'True Detective,' and I needed to place those guys in locations where there were other levels of visual storytelling. It didn't necessarily have to move the plot forward, but it had to add tone or add to the overall feeling.
Cary Fukunaga
#100. My grandma was really sick when I was working on 'Sin Nombre' and eventually died that summer when we were finishing the film. But I was able to bring an unfinished version of the film for her to watch.
Cary Fukunaga
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