Some of the subject matters that I like to make stories about are definitely not inherently commercial. So I have to look for a very special kind of financing and go down a very gentle path in order to make my films, as do basically all social-realist filmmakers. It's a long process.
There's all these costs of war, and they're huge and long-lasting. It's not just the numbers CNN broadcasts. And we never want to pay the VA bill; we never want to pay the bill to take care of these warriors after we applaud their sacrifice.
The questions that loom can be intimidating. 'What kind of moves is she gonna make? What is she gonna do?' There is this pressure that you're supposed to keep impressing.
I'm interested in the lives of Americans for whom the ways this culture has tried to define itself - that is, self-esteem defined by material wealth - they have nothing to do with that.
The time that it takes to make the feature is really contingent on the feature being sort of almost ready-made - so coming to a book is more ready-made. You at least have the story that someone sorted out.
A role is never just a ready-made thing.
I'm someone who's always looking for hope - if there's a ray of hope, a shrapnel, shred, a flake of hope - because I take the misfortune or hard times of others very seriously.
The protagonist in 'Winter's Bone' was a really good role for a female. She was strong; she didn't have to conform to something or be a sidekick to any man. That's part of what you're responding to; it's a woman-centric situation. Her value in the film was not reliant on any man.
I don't want to be on a soapbox, but I feel like a lot of documentary filmmakers are part of the ancient tradition of writing down notes, of saying, 'Hey people, hey people!'
I'm doing my best to stay off that financing scheme that relies on this one strip of capital, which is the red carpet. And - no sob story - but it's hard. It takes a while.
You can't make movies without known names, and unknowns can't become known, because they can't get work.
All filmmakers want the option to make another film, to have it not always be such an uphill battle - for it to be our life, our working life.
I feel like reality TV has thrown a difficult wrench in the system - on the programming and making side, and on the curating side - which is that we now have a higher threshold for the salacious. We have a higher threshold, unprecedented, for fast, cheap, and out of control.
