Gavin Hood
Gavin Hood
Gavin Hoodis a South African filmmaker, screenwriter, producer and actor, best known for writing and directing Tsotsi, which won the Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film. He also directed the films X-Men Origins: Wolverine and Ender's Game...
NationalitySouth African
ProfessionDirector
Date of Birth12 May 1963
scripts now-and-then
One reads many scripts, and some of them are good and some of them are not, but every now and then, one really grabs you. You simply can't put it down.
emotions heart human stories
Our stories are the same as your stories. They're about the human heart and emotion.
needs parents
My parents have been car-jacked. I have been mugged. We all know what it is like. But do you write a story about the way it is, or the way it should, or could, or needs to be?
cape excited
We are excited to be in Cape Town.
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We arranged a meeting in Los Angeles with big name stars, but I had to drop the idea. I wanted to film in the local Soweto dialect that only Soweto youth can speak and believed that shooting in any other language would dilute the impact of the film.
free south together
Without what you did, we would not have been able to make this film together as South Africans in a free country.
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There's always a theme I'm drawn to, that we humans are not good or bad. We're all a mixture of both. We can have great compassion or commit great violence.
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The truth about people at every economic level of life is you get those who are kind and who are not, those who are greedy, whether they be rich or poor. That's a common thread through humanity on any street you go to.
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The reality is that art has often risen to greater heights than the people who created it. Many flawed artists have created great works of art. You have to decide if you are going to listen to Richard Wagner's music or not because he was very anti-Semitic.
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The question I ask myself when adapting a book is how do I be true to the spirit and soul of the character? How would I describe this character in my medium? If you asked one person to do a painting of something and another to create a sculpture of it, you'll never ask, 'Why doesn't the painting look like the sculpture?'
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Most big popcorn movies are 'bad guy does something to good guy, good guy gets revenge on bad guy, sets the world right, and moves on.' And 'Ender's Game' is just not that simple, so it's an exciting challenge. It's a little terrifying, and let's see how audiences respond.
aids deal dramas early great grew half hired hiv presented spent time
In the early '90s, I was hired to write educational dramas about HIV and AIDS in the shantytowns. I did that for two and a half years, and then I was hired on other films. When 'Tsotsi' presented itself, I thought, 'This is not a world I grew up in, but I've spent a great deal of time writing about it and researching it in my past.'
mutant post traumatic
In the comic-book lore, of course, you mutate post a traumatic event. You must have the mutant gene, but if something traumatic happens to you, usually at puberty, then that mutation manifests itself.
adapted felt films initially integral prepared work worked written
I worked initially in very low-budget independent films that I often wrote. My early work was all written by myself, and then I adapted 'Tsotsi,' so I was used to the writing process being, in a way, integral to my directing. I felt it really prepared me.