James Ponsoldt Quotes

• By the time you arrive at Sundance as a filmmaker, you've been living with your film intimiately, and scrutinized every frame, and probably aren't happy with - or at least I'm never happy with it - and you've seen it in the roughest of states, and you lose perspective, really.

  James Ponsoldt

  Perspective, Film, States

  Source: collider.com

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• A lot of things, whether it's Brexit, the U.S. election, things that are happening on Facebook Live, the way that Twitter in many cases was weaponized, obviously for good but then obviously for bad, for proxy. Governments who use it to troll and give voice to conspiracy theories, white supremacists, et cetera. I think that's not going away.

  James Ponsoldt

  Thinking, Giving, Going Away

  Source: www.empireonline.com

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• I think the irony of modern life is that our data, our highly personal information, has been taken from us, but in many cases it was given away freely by us. We willfully, consciously or unconsciously, acquiesced and gave it away for a new app, you know? For the products that we have. We didn't read the fine print, or don't even really care and didn't really check to see if we could opt out. No one had to steal it from us.

  James Ponsoldt

  Taken, Thinking, Care

  Source: www.empireonline.com

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• You just work really hard and scrutinize. What is it called in politics? "Opposition research"? You want to do the detective work on your client so to speak before your opponent can dig it up. We're vetting everything thoroughly.

  James Ponsoldt

  Detective Work, Research, Opponents

  Source: collider.com

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• Any work of art dignifies life.

  James Ponsoldt

  Art, Works Of Art

  Source: onlineathens.com

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• I was raised by ex-hippies, but I grew up worshipping a television set. I am skeptical of a lot of things, but I was on Myspace and Friendster, and I have a fascination with the new. My wife and I met on Facebook!

  James Ponsoldt

  Wife, My Wife, Skeptical

  Source: www.motherjones.com

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• We live in a time when there are tech companies that have an unprecedented accumulation of power, wealth, and information with basically no competition. It's not in their nature to self-regulate, to break themselves up, or ask for less information. It's only in their nature to grow and gain more information from us, because the more that they know about us, honestly the better they can market to us and sell to us and make us better consumers.

  James Ponsoldt

  Competition, Wealth, Break

  Source: www.empireonline.com

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• Innovation, sending civilians to outer space, mapping the mind, curing cancer - all these things, they're great. Obviously these same companies are also making a lot of money and accumulating a lot of our data at the same time, which seemed like independent things and one is beneficial and one is problematic for us as individuals, but in the rush of the new I think a lot of the philosophical, ethical, moral, and legal questions don't get asked in time. It's not in our nature to pause, sit, meditate, question, debate. We move forward. Technology generally answers itself with more technology.

  James Ponsoldt

  Cancer, Moving, Philosophical

  Source: www.empireonline.com

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• And don't rush to make movies. Movies should be made when they're absolutely ready. There's too many bad movies being made.

  James Ponsoldt

  Made, Should, Ready

  Source: collider.com

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• This needs to work on that level, but it has the additional strain of it's going to be profoundly scrutinized by political junkies from the right and the left who will pick apart every little thing. We are inherently dramatizing Hillary Rodham, or Hillary Clinton, who's a very famous figure. There's a lot of biographies about her, but there's also elements that are private moments, that are dramatized with an arc, and we have to take creative license. Everything is sort of a cost-benefit.

  James Ponsoldt

  Creative, Political, Needs

  Source: collider.com

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• Blade Runner's just a noir at the end of the day. Rosemary's Baby is about the fear of having a child and how that gets in the way of a romantic relationship. Or whatever it is, and you add that extra element that blows your mind apart.

  James Ponsoldt

  Baby, Children, Blow

  Source: collider.com

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• With Rodham, for instance, it has to work on an emotional level. It has to work on a character level. If it's only "Look, it has famous people," then it's a wax museum come to life and that's really boring. It's sort of like what they say about science fiction and horror where the really good ones, if you remove that element of it, it still has to work. That's the reason The Shining works or Rosemary's Baby or Blade Runner.

  James Ponsoldt

  Baby, Character, Emotional

  Source: collider.com

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• I've heard a lot of variation of similar questions, but it's interesting to see the variations of audiences and how different people respond, so I think it's all valid. I don't take it personally at this point, which I probably would have at Sundance. But it's really thrilling.

  James Ponsoldt

  Thinking, People, Interesting

  Source: collider.com

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• After that really, I spent the majority of the spring going to tons and tons of regional festivals throughout America. Every corner of the country, I took the movie to twenty film festivals or something to that extent. I've lost track. Probably done Q&As 40-50 times at this point. It's always hard to watch something I've made, but I've got a little more objectivity and kind of see the film as not just an extension of myself.

  James Ponsoldt

  Country, Spring, Objectivity

  Source: collider.com

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• It's hard to look at anything with an objective eye. I think people bring themselves into the equation when they watch a movie. They bring their own prejudices, their own biases, their own feelings toward the subject matter, the characters.

  James Ponsoldt

  Eye, Character, Thinking

  "James Ponsoldt on David Foster Wallace and the objections to The End Of The Tour". Interview with Pete Croatto, www.avclub.com. August 5, 2015.

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• And that first screening was overwhelming. You were there. People applauded when the title card comes in; there's a big "gasp moment" partway through the film. It couldn't have gone better, and it was very surreal.

  James Ponsoldt

  People, Titles, Cards

  Source: collider.com

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• And I was constantly trying to stay in body, so to speak. It feels very surreal, and I go away to a happy place where I'm there but not really there. I was just trying to enjoy the night, I guess is what I'm saying. We had a lovely after-party.

  James Ponsoldt

  Party, Night, Lovely

  Source: collider.com

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• But you certainly don't have perspective. And there's so much pressure going into that opening night because you know there's journalists, tons of acquisitions people, and the fate of your film in some ways, if not decided, is really affected by how it screens that night.

  James Ponsoldt

  Fate, Night, People

  Source: collider.com

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• I cannot control what you bring into the theater when you see the film. I can't control what my parents bring in. I can't control what some random person on Twitter brings in to the theater. All I can control is the hour and 50 minutes that the movie lasts, and try to give it absolutely everything I can.

  James Ponsoldt

  Giving, Parent, Trying

  Source: www.avclub.com

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• I don't think in terms of what's going to be successful. I have plenty of friends who make very small movies and friends who make giant, $150 million blockbusters, and the thing that I really admire is, the ones who do it well do it very sincerely.

  James Ponsoldt

  Successful, Thinking, Giants

  Source: onlineathens.com

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• Making movies is really hard, and it can be humbling. And once you put them out into the world, you can't control how people will respond to it.

  James Ponsoldt

  People, World, Humbling

  Source: onlineathens.com

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• Whether a project is large or small, it doesn't matter much to me as long as I feel I can serve the story as best as possible.

  James Ponsoldt

  Long, Stories, Matter

  Source: onlineathens.com

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• What I think is great about Pippin, specifically, and I wouldn't make this generalization about all musicals, is that it is about how we tell stories and the way stories are very subjective. How we tell some things and leave other things out in the way The Princess Bride is or The Wizard of Oz is, which both have a framing device.

  James Ponsoldt

  Princess, Thinking, Stories

  Source: collider.com

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• All the more a cheesy musical seems fake, so it requires a level of honesty to be injected or an acknowledgement of that which is fake and fun about musicals, and it isn't necessarily escapist. Like there are great musicals like Once, which feel very almost like a mumblecore musical. I love Once. It's great.

  James Ponsoldt

  Honesty, Fun, Fake

  Source: collider.com

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• In many ways, I think I'm a good person for it. I mean, I'm not a musical theater dude. Or rather, I don't watch everything, and love everything, and have every album. The ones that I love - like I've seen The Wizard of Oz a hundred times. West Side Story I love. I love Singing in the Rain, I love White Christmas. I love the Dennis Potter ones like Singing Detective and Pennies from Heaven. I love Sondheim.

  James Ponsoldt

  Rain, Mean, Thinking

  Source: collider.com

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