Canadian - Director | October 3, 1967 -
I must say, to my great surprise and pleasure, I deeply loved making movies in the United States because of all the opportunities it gave me to work with people that I admire as artists.
Denis Villeneuve
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I think a good director is a good listener.
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I never went to school for directing. I studied theater with a director. I followed plays to see how a director would talk to the actors. I tried to make my own school.
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When I was a kid, I was always going to bed creating a story, and that was the birth of filmmaking for me. I would like going to the dream-state by telling the story to someone else in my mind. That was my imaginary friend; it was an imaginary audience listening to my story.
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I'd love to be able to do a comedy like 'Dr. Strangelove.' I'm not a very serious person. Really, I'm very silly.
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In Canada, for boys, your identity is built on hockey. It's your social position; it's everything. And I was the worst hockey player of Canada.
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Very early on, I was writing stories, and I was amazed at Spielberg's movies when I was young. Coming from the countryside, I was so impressed with the way he was able to tell stories and the way he was able to deal with le merveilleux - the wonders. Very quickly, he became for me a massive hero, and he introduced me to the world of a director.
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On a film crew, you can see very quickly that some people who are working with you are stronger than you. Then you have to have the humility to listen to them. And because very often they have better ideas than yours, it can be tough on the evil ego. But it makes a better film.
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As a director, you're a bit of a dictator. But I feel that you're a better director if you're open to other people's ideas. It means that it's tougher: you have to be in a choosing process; you have to put the ego aside. As long as everybody's aiming in the same direction... I'm open to my main partners in the film crew.
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The truth is, when I started to make films, I was terrified. I had a huge difference in what I was writing in the screenplay and what was on the screen after. Sometimes there was a big gap. Now, the more I have experienced, the more I do movies, the more I feel that the dream is closer to the screen. It's coming with experience.
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I made 'Enemy' to prep myself for 'Prisoners.' I had the need to direct something smaller in English before going to Hollywood. That's the way I sold it to Warner because they asked me if I was berserk to make a movie right before.
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My home is Montreal. I will stay in Montreal and continue to make movies in Montreal. But it's also very healthy for Canadian filmmakers to work outside the country. You learn so much.
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