Cary Fukunaga: If you think of most murders as being between people wh...

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.

Cary Fukunaga

finishing scripts littles

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.

Cary Fukunaga

important world fall

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.

Cary Fukunaga

shooting mind thinking

I think it's a fascinating thing to see how lonely people are in this world and what they're looking for. It's a universal concept. So, it's something that interests me and I'll probably revisit it if I get the chance to do the child soldier film because I think it's one of the most important scripts I've written. It's just too dark to do as a film right now. I need to do something a bit different.

Cary Fukunaga

lonely dark children

I've been wanting to make a movie about the war in Sierra Leone, specifically, for more than 15 years.

Cary Fukunaga

sierra-leone war years

When you know you have a certain amount of work to finish, you just don't allow yourself to get sick again.

Cary Fukunaga

certain sick knows

A period romance film with elements of horror. That was successful, because I feel like Coppola's DRACULA was one or the other. You know? It was never scary it was never a film he got invested in the romance of the characters. He understood it, but he never got invested. So it as a challenge for me to see if I could do that, I still don't know how audiences will sort of react to that.

Cary Fukunaga

romance successful character

You're always against the clock. But really just fighting for quality.

Cary Fukunaga

clock quality fighting

I'm pretty hard to impress, and I'm pretty exacting, in terms of what I want from my props department and art department. We spend many, many hours going over visual research and finding the right artists to create the material.

Cary Fukunaga

research want art

Getting back in the directors chair - there's a sense of like doing something every year. It's not like riding a bike, you're always learning new things, you're gonna face new challenges and when you face new challenges you'll have an answer for them.

Cary Fukunaga

challenges directors years

I do want to direct a movie from horseback one day.

Cary Fukunaga

horseback one-day want

Collaboration sometimes causes conflict, and sometimes it's easy, but the bringing together of great minds only adds.

Cary Fukunaga

causes mind together

I think auditions are set up for failure because they're not really the set experience. There's no time to develop the character. You're just looking at someone... if someone's really good in an audition, sometimes they're not good in the film. It's something you learn when you're doing short films. It's the same way that some people do well at taking tests and some people don't. But when you're on a long-term filmmaking process it's a completely different feeling.

Cary Fukunaga

character people thinking

When you think about being a director, you think about writing stories, putting the camera in interesting places and directing the actors to get your vision, but it's hard to imagine even this process... sitting here nine months later talking about the film and talking about it 20 times in one day. You don't even think about the part where you come to the set every morning and everyone's looking at you to see your mood in order to see what the day is going to be like, and the influence that you wield.

Cary Fukunaga

writing morning thinking

Sometimes the best set experiences make for the worst films. So, you don't want it to be too good an experience! But the bulk of your life is working with people and collaborating so you don't want anyone to be miserable on your film either. You want it to be something that people walk away from saying that it was a good experience for them and hopefully a good film. As a director, you are sort of leader of that troupe for that period of time, so you're aware of morale and your effect - how you are as a person and how that sort of trickles down to everyone else.

Cary Fukunaga

leader sometimes people

I don't know what I am on set. I can be many different things on set depending on how stressful a situation is. But at the end of the day we're making movies, we're not saving the world... we're not an army, no one's lives are at risk and we're just trying to make art, so I think as long as you keep reminding yourself that's what it's about you can have fun.

Cary Fukunaga

army fun art

I try not to read too much because what ends up happening is that you ignore the nice reviews and you just focus on the bad reviews. A negative lesson is learned seven times deeper than a positive reinforcement.

Cary Fukunaga

focus nice trying

I've never watched my films with an everyday audience so it was really crazy to watch people clap at the end of my film - with no one there, no actors, no people from the film. It was just a spontaneous reaction, so I thought that was probably the best compliment you could get from an audience.

Cary Fukunaga

everyday crazy people

I have tremendous faith that there will be greater films to come.

Cary Fukunaga

greater film

I have aspirations of making a big, historical epic. I don't know if I'll ever get the money to do it.

Cary Fukunaga

bigs historical epic

If you think of most murders as being between people who know each other, it's very easy to figure out who the killer is. But when you have a murder that appears random, where the person is not someone that's within the known radius of the victim, then it's much, much more difficult to solve.