Cary Fukunaga
Cary Fukunaga
Cary Joji Fukunaga is an American film director, writer, and cinematographer. He is known for writing and directing the 2009 film Sin Nombre, the 2011 film Jane Eyre and for directing and executive producing the first season of the HBO series True Detective, for which he won the Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Directing for a Drama Series. He has received acclaim for the 2015 war drama Beasts of No Nation, in which Fukunaga was writer, director, producer, and cinematographer...
NationalityAmerican
ProfessionDirector
Date of Birth10 July 1977
CityOakland, CA
CountryUnited States of America
You have to tease enough misinformation and lack of information to hopefully make people want more.
When you know you have a certain amount of work to finish, you just don't allow yourself to get sick again.
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.
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.
The only pressure is the pressure I put on myself, that's up to be I guess to mitigate that. I think there's always pressure that you make the right choice for the next film. You don't know what the outcome is gonna be, there's always potential to find length to your career as well. Now I'm so far from any other job skills that if I don't make movies.
One of the great things about working with Focus is that you're never forced, especially with a film with low budget. The pressure is sort of off. It's like it's so under the radar in a sense that you can cast whoever you want.
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.
If you have something really important you want to say, you have to read your audience, I guess.
You're always against the clock. But really just fighting for quality.
Every single substitute teacher growing up could not pronounce my name, so whenever someone pauses, I'm like, "Oh, that's me."
It's an important part of being a member of society to know what's happening in the world and to know where you fall in it and what you can do about it.
There's nothing better than finishing something and looking at it. Whether it be a script or a movie, it's this complete little thing that now exists and is hopefully immortal.
Increasingly, there's much better material on television, but there's not always the time and money to make it, so you've got to make sure you make it in the right place. It also depends on time commitment; a lot of directors will make a pilot, but a series is just a whole other level of involvement.
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.