Michel Gondry
Michel Gondry
Michel Gondryis a French independent film director, screenwriter, and producer. He is noted for his inventive visual style and distinctive manipulation of mise en scène. He won an Academy Award for Best Original Screenplay as one of the writers of Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, which is often ranked one of the greatest films of the 2000s...
NationalityAmerican
ProfessionDirector
Date of Birth8 May 1963
CityVersailles, France
CountryUnited States of America
Perhaps my favourite story is 'Le Passe-Muraille' by Marcel Ayme. It's about a guy who wakes up with a weird faculty that means he can walk through walls. He's a very shy clerk, and he uses it to get revenge, or vent his frustration.
I've dreamed a lot, but i'm not a very good sleeper.
There is an amount of abstraction in my movies, and sometimes they don't really understand it until the film is finished.
I had a lot of encouragement and tolerance from my parents, but I also have many friends who didn't get that from their parents and in a way they have more strength from spending years where nobody believed in them.
I learned to drive when I was 35. I'm driving like an old lady and very close to the wheel. I don't take many risks, and when people yell at me I say 'sorry, sorry, sorry!' I don't have road rage yet.
The beauty of doing # film is that you construct whatever you do block by block and you can build something that will stay.
Sometimes, when people use too much blue screen in movies, the actors don't look credible, because they have their own opinion of what the thing will look like, and each person has a different opinion.
When people are very original, sometimes they are original as a way to resist the mainstream.
At school I was very shy. I wasn't funny really.
The problem is, with a lot of children's films, they are very commercial.
I read about some movie where they did everything on blue screen, and the actors were not even connecting to each other.
I don't call cut between the takes - it's my way to help the actor keep focused. As soon as you say 'cut' you have 10 people jumping on them and everybody's trying to do a great job, and they do, but sometimes they forget that the more important thing is the performance, creating the performance.
I think animation is a very truthful way to express your thoughts, because the process is very direct. That's what I've always liked about animation, particularly abstract animation. You go from the idea to execution, straight from your brain. It's like when you hear someone playing an instrument, and you feel the direct connection between the instrument and his brain, because the instrument becomes an extension of his arms and fingers. It's like a scanner of the brain and thought process that you can watch, or hear.
I've always loved 3D. In fact, as a kid, I was exposed to 3D at an early age because my grandfather was a specialist of 3D in cinematheques. And then my cousin put it in 'Science of Sleep' with toilet paper tube cities. But he was a specialist and I always wanted to do something in 3D.