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
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
All I kept thinking about was, "Man, he's so relaxed onstage! I'm never going to be that relaxed! I'm clearly not meant to be in front of the camera. I'm really not meant for anything but behind the camera."
My mind is in so many different places while we're shooting. Part of it is watching the performance, part of it is watching the camera, and part of it is thinking about the stuff that we have to get that day. It's always a pleasure watching, but you also take it for granted, when you're on the actual grind, making the show.
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 have tremendous faith that there will be greater films to come.
Your movie should lull people into a place of openness and vulnerability. If it is just a diatribe, it's never going to work.
In snowboarding, you're constantly aware that people are so technically brilliant at what they do, and you feel like, "Ugh, I'll never be able to do that."