Michel Gondry Quotes

All these gadgets, the phone and the computer, they expose the inside of your brain in a way that's bad.

Every great idea is on the verge of being stupid.

Orange is an underrated color, it's the second most underrated color after yellow.

Of course, from time to time, I want to do everything myself and be more involved on my own with the creative process. But I don't mind the collaboration at all.

In my opinion, it's more interesting to see magic happening in a world that feels grounded. If the world is already crazy, then anything can happen. So it's better to start with something real.

I'm not against the technology at all, I just don't like to use it if it's just to mimic what you can do with traditional methods.

I would define myself as being naive and perverse at the same time. And I think that if that is consistent it will make the tone consistent.

When people are very original, sometimes they are original as a way to resist the mainstream.

Misinterpretation leads me to inspiration and creativity because I think my brain is trying to figure out some information that I'm confused about.

I like the days when all the filmmakers had was a film roll, a camera and a gangster. The Mack Sennett comedies were all like that. They'd create little teams to go out and shoot films.

The MTV Video Awards were never about the video, but about the song. Most of the time it was just to glorify people for the wrong reason.

It's part of my job to maintain the emotional reality and the naturalism even when the atmosphere is contrived.

I've dreamed a lot, but i'm not a very good sleeper.

The beauty of doing film is that you construct whatever you do block by block and you can build something that will stay.

My father had a Super 8 camera when I was a kid and sometimes he would use it. I did some animation with it. I did a lot of flipbooks.

I think the purpose of test screenings is different for the studio and for the filmmaker. For the studio, I think they want to know whether the film works or not.

There is an amount of abstraction in my movies, and sometimes they don't really understand it until the film is finished.

I read about some movie where they did everything on blue screen, and the actors were not even connecting to each other.

I find, surprisingly, that actors are liberated in their work if there's stuff going on around them, because they can't think too much about who they're supposed to be.

I like actors who just are who they are, with a little bit of qualification to adapt to their character. But mostly they just use their own personality to embody the character.

I like actors who don't have to think too hard about what they have to do to achieve their performance.

The problem is when you get forced to use ideas that aren't good. When I can filter the ideas and use the best of them, I am happy to collaborate.

My goal was to show that even if people work in a garage or a supermarket, they have very funny things to say. We never hear their voices.

I'm always excited to work with actors.

I don't like those shows where people get eliminated every week, and then they have to get meaner to survive.

I was sort of lazy at school, but I realize I still have something to bring to the subject which is comforting. I feel I am not as stupid as I thought I was.

I think it's a problem when journalists have the title of their article before they do the interview, because it biases the way they conduct it.

At school I was very shy. I wasn't funny really.

I don't like the idea of competition - maybe because I kept losing them when I was a kid. Maybe it's better to be the one who loses?

It's very hard to say I'm surrealist. It's like saying I'm poetic. It's not something you want necessarily to be aware of.

I'm attracted to working with comedians because they don't have that stars' idea of what a hero should be. The downside is they're always addressing the camera too much.

The problem is, with a lot of children's films, they are very commercial.

Pop music is created by repression - and then the system takes it and makes even more money with it!

In the '90s movies were so serious, and so stylistic and slick that I could not identify with them.

In a way, putting actors deep into this sort of complicated universe frees them from thinking about who they should be. They just are somebody.

You need philosophy. It sounds a little pompous but I think when you direct a film, the only way to find a response to the questions you keep asking yourself is to have a philosophy.

If you're not grown up enough to understand that a trailer is not done by the director, then fine. Judge the movie from the trailer.

That's what the internet is: it's like bombarding your eyeballs with these myriad blinking colour lights. It's like trying to watch a movie on your phone in the middle of Times Square.

Every movie I do is challenging for me. There is some element of imaginative that you wouldn't have in a typical movie.

I hate cynicism. I wipe it from me. I don't like cynical people. I don't like cynical movies. Cynicism is very easy. You don't have to justify it. You don't have to fight for it.

Competition impedes creativity because you present yourself in a way that's going to been seen by somebody outside of you. You're not very much yourself and it limits you.

And I'm not a micromanagement guy. I prefer to spend my time doing other stuff than that.

I love 3D a lot, I have a great interest in 3D, so if I am given the tools to do a project with 3D, it's a dream for me.

I think always my interest in making movies is to have something really technical mixed with something that was not so formal...something free.

The problem when you edit a film together, when you shoot a film, you are drawn into the moment. You want each moment to be special and full of life.

You can't feel sorry for a scene. If the movie works without the scene, then you don't need the scene.

Objectivity is very hard to achieve. It needs some research and patience. If you want to do something honest, you have to explore it a little longer.

If people don't like the trailer, then blame it on the people who made the trailer.

I don't thrive on control. I'm not looking for control. I think I get better results when I don't control things.

I want to explore new ideas and put myself in a place where I can finish a project that is more unusual or that doesn't seem doable.