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
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.
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.
When I see an image in my head that compels me, where there's this mystery about what's going to happen next or could happen next, I'll be intrigued. There are so many scripts that you read, and you know exactly what's going to happen, and there aren't too many where you can't tell within the first 20 pages where it's going.
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.
I think the semantics of mini-series for a network is that it has an end.
'Jane Eyre' was one of those films that I was familiar with as a kid, and I always enjoyed the story.
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.
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.
My ideas tend to be either really big in terms of like, the logistics, or really small.
My mom was married to a Mexican guy - a surfer - and so we'd kind of camp out on the beach the swell season.
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.
Literally, I don't have a television. So I don't really know what's happening pop-culturally. I read the 'New York Times.' And there's one worldwide cabin blog that I look at.
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.
To be straight, I was kind of a dork, and in order to fulfill the creative fires burning inside me, I participated vigorously as a Civil War re-enactor through most of my teenage years, traveling across the country to participate in large scale reenactments - grandiose plays enacted by over weight history buffs and war enthusiasts alike.