162 Quotes by Gus Van Sant

It's easy to keep score at a football game because it's just how many times you get the ball over the goal. But, when you ask an audience to tell us how many times the invisible ball got over the invisible goal, and they go, "Well, it was 46," they're just making it up. So, if you're listening to that, as though you're actually listening to the score of a football game, you're misleading yourself.

You're following your track, the story, your only plan, your map for the audience, and all the other stuff is, like, the fun stuff: the costumes, the locations, the set-dressing and the actors. They can all be variable as you like if you stick - however roughly - to the path.

I try to get to know the actors as much as I can. I feel like I'm friends with them for starters and for a week or two, we rehearse when they're getting the costumes together.

In rare cases, I've had music before I shot the movie. I think that for 'Good Will Hunting' I had an Elliot Smith record or a couple of them and I just somehow felt like the sound had something to it that reminded me of the story. So in that case there was music beforehand.

I don't think American independent films have ever really been particularly experimental, except for the original guys from the '60s who were huge influences, like Stan Brakhage, Robert Breer, and Stan van der Beek. They were the true independents.

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

I'm going in a really weird I-don't-know-where direction, but I prefer anything [different] from how standardized filmmaking has become.

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

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