Filmmaking, like any other art, is a very profound means of human communication; beyond the professional pleasure of succeeding or the pain of failing, you do want your film to be seen, to communicate itself to other people. – Kenneth Lonergan
I’ve done a lot of assignment work in my life, and the only way you can do it is to make it your own as quickly as possible, and then you give it back. – Kenneth Lonergan
You can shoot a film in New York without seeing the Empire State Building. Or Starbucks… although the latter is much less realistic. – Kenneth Lonergan
The creative process on ‘Margaret’ was incredibly satisfying. I loved the cast; I had a great time writing the script. I liked making the movie. Believe it or not, I actually like editing the movie. It was all the rest of it that was such a nightmare. – Kenneth Lonergan
When I walk onto a film set, I become frightened and nervous. There’s all this equipment, all these people, and most of them do things you don’t know how to do. I didn’t come from a film background. – Kenneth Lonergan
I’ve just always been interested in alter-naturalism and seeing if you can make real life interesting enough to be dramatic without enhancing it. Like, could you make a movie or write a play in which there’s no compression of time, there’s no enhanced event, it’s just real life? – Kenneth Lonergan
I’m always struck when I go somewhere I’ve never been before, especially if it’s in my home town, by just how different the atmosphere can be, and how disorienting it can be – especially if there’s any kind of trouble. – Kenneth Lonergan
Teenagers all think their life is a movie. If you break up with someone or you have a fight, you walk around with movie scores playing in your head. You sort of see yourself suffering as you’re suffering. There’s a lot of melodrama attached to the real events of your life. – Kenneth Lonergan
Little kids grow up discovering the world that’s shown to them and then when you become a teenager, it kind of shrinks a little bit. I think when you get past that point, one of the important things is that you see there is more to the world than yourself. – Kenneth Lonergan
There are a lot of elements when you’re writing, or when I’m writing, that are sitting in the back of your mind. I try to let them stay there, because they find their way in more naturally that way. – Kenneth Lonergan
If you’re going to make a statement, I think you should write it in prose and make a statement. If you have characters who are mouthpieces for a point of view, then you have to be very clever about disguising it. – Kenneth Lonergan
I was nearly a teen-ager before I stopped assuming that everyone I met was Jewish. – Kenneth Lonergan
I remember the kind of teenager I was, the kind of teenager I wanted to be, and then the kind of teenagers that were all around me. Life is lived on such a big scale in those years – and such an embarrassing one as well. – Kenneth Lonergan
I know there are some actors who won’t switch their accents off when they’re on set and like to be called by their character’s names. That works for them, and that’s great. – Kenneth Lonergan
I feel like if you can describe something fully and accurately, then people will be able to see it themselves – they don’t need be told what to. – Kenneth Lonergan
I grew up going to the movies, not watching them on television, so I’m still a bit resistant to TV as a medium. – Kenneth Lonergan
I love accents, I love listening to people talk, I like to try to emulate it as accurately as I can. – Kenneth Lonergan
Sometimes films have no rehearsals – you don’t have real rehearsals on the set because the day is so dominated by the schedule. – Kenneth Lonergan
I wrote a play once called ‘Lobby Hero,’ which I thought turned out very well, but there’s no final version of it. I published the one we produced, but there are seven other versions with different variations sitting in my desk at home. – Kenneth Lonergan
There’s something about the impact of a big screen that means something to me, even though I realize almost every film is fated to be seen for a year in theaters, and then forever after on television. – Kenneth Lonergan
You’re thinking about the physical consequences about what you’re writing if you’re going to direct it. If you’re not going to direct it, then it’s somebody else’s problem, and they’ll solve it. – Kenneth Lonergan
Very often what will happen between actors is that they’ll develop kind of a ghost relationship in real life that reflects their relationship on screen or in the play that they’re doing. In fact, I’d say that happens almost every time. I don’t know why that happens, but it seems very common. – Kenneth Lonergan
I still haven’t quite caught on to the idea of writing without dialogue. I like writing dialogue, and there’s nothing wrong with dialogue in movies. – Kenneth Lonergan
