He had planned to adapt Dr. Atul Gawande’s Being Mortal, about coping with death, but the film was suspended when one of its stars, Bill Murray, was accused of misconduct. (Murray has said he kissed a female staff member, as a joke, while both wore Covid masks.)

On what was supposed to be a shoot day for Being Mortal, Ansari sent another script he’d been working on to one of his Being Mortal stars, Seth Rogen, who loved it — and signed up for what became Good Fortune.

The film, which is now available on video on demand, stars Keanu Reeves as Gabriel, a lowly guardian angel tasked with keeping people from texting and driving. He ends up causing Ansari’s character, Arj, a struggling delivery driver sleeping in his car, to switch lives with Rogen’s character, Jeff, a spoiled tech bro. Keke Palmer, who was also to have starred in Good Fortune, plays Elena, who is trying to unionize the hardware chain where she works.

Besides writing and directing, Ansari is famed for his standup comedy, key part on NBC’s Parks and Recreation, and starring role on Netflix’s Master of None, which he co-created. For our latest edition of Things I’ve Learned as a Moviemaker, he told us about always being ready to pivot. Here is his moviemaking advice, as told to MovieMaker.—M.M. 

Aziz Ansari: Things I've Learned as a Moviemaker

1. You’ve just got to be writing all the time, and have so many things going at the same time, because movies are so hard to put together. Every movie is a miracle. I remember reading about Steven Spielberg when he made 1941, and it didn’t go well. And he said if you have something that doesn’t go well, just immediately dive into the next thing. 

2. The most important thing is to just start directing. Directing is such a tough job to define. You have a script, and whether you’ve written it or not, you basically see it in your head, and you’re trying to share with a team of people what you see and how it should be executed. And the more you know that, the more you can articulate it. Ideally, you have a great team, and they collaborate with you and push it even further. 

3. I cannot recommend enough to read Elia Kazan’s A Life. I read it while making Good Fortune, and it was almost magical. Every time I was dealing with a problem, he was somehow talking about it. Like we were editing, and I’d be reading his views on editing. 

4. For Being Mortal, I read the book, I became friends with Atul, I interviewed nurses and healthcare workers, people that worked at hospices, doctors, everyone. For this movie, I went and did DoorDash and interviewed people who slept in their cars. I talked to a guy who tried to unionize his Home Depot. That stuff is your best friend, because you don’t need to live the experience if you do the research.

5. Watch as many movies as you can. When I decided I was going to start directing, I thought: OK, who are the best directors alive? And it’s, you know, Scorsese, Tarantino, PTA, whoever you want to say. What do those people have in common? They have an encyclopedic knowledge of film. And I realized that cannot be a coincidence. I immediately started trying to watch as many films as I could. There was a time when I really hadn’t seen everything, but it doesn’t take that long to start racking them up. If you’re like, “I’m gonna watch one movie a day,” even if you don’t hit every day, you can still watch 300 movies in a year. You should really try to devour film.

Good Fortune, written by, directing and starring Aziz Ansari, is now available on VOD from Lionsgate.

Main image: Keanu Reeves and Aziz Ansari in Good Fortune. Lionsgate.

Those films don’t even include those directed by her most enduring creative partner, Todd Haynes. She has produced all 11 of his features, starting with his very DIY 1987 breakthrough Superstar — the tragic story of The Carpenters, told via Barbie dolls — and continuing through 2023’s magnificent May December.

But even Vachon has setbacks, especially as film financiers have become more risk-averse in recent years, particularly when it comes to dramas for grown-ups. She remembers recently approaching some financiers with a script that they agreed was fantastic. But they decided to pass because they just couldn’t figure out who would want the film.

“And I was just like, ‘Jesus, guys: You love it, you think the casting is amazing, you think it’s completely original, and you won’t buy it? That’s depressing,’” Vachon recalls.

Still, the wins outnumber the losses. On the early summer weekend when we spoke with her, at the Provincetown International Film Festival, the then-new film Materialists — her second collaboration with Past Lives director Celine Song —  was enjoying the third-best opening weekend ever for an A24 film, and the best-ever for a non-genre A24 film.

Vachon, who leads Killer Films with fellow New York producer Pamela Koffler, has co-written three books on independent filmmaking and speaks regularly at film schools all over the world, while also serving as the artistic director of the MFA Program at Stony Brook Manhattan. So please bear in mind that her list of Things I’ve Learned as a Moviemaker is by no means all-encompassing. –M.M.

1. A lot of young people say to me, “What’s the path? How do I get to where you are?” And you know, my answer is, “Be born in the ’60s. Come of age in New York City in the ’80s.” It’s not the same path, guys. I don’t know what to tell you. But when I try and pull out things that worked for me, I would say that in some ways, the fact that I knew as little as I did when I told Todd Haynes I wanted to produce his first feature meant that I had a kind of fearlessness, so that was really helpful. I didn’t know how hard it was. 

2. I also think that a lot of young people today get very caught up in this idea that there is a path and that they have to tick boxes off to get to be a writer, to get to be a director, to get to be a producer. And I’m a big proponent of just: Walk through the doors that open for you.

You think you want to be in documentaries, but you get an opportunity in publicity? Try it. When I have people come speak at my class who are costume designers or DPs or directors or whatever they are, my first question to them always is, “How did you get here? How did you decide you wanted to be this?” And 90% of the time, the answer is, “Funny you should ask, because I thought I wanted to do this, but then this happened to me…” 

Christine Vachon on Nepotism vs. Working Your Way Up

3. Film is accused, quite rightly, of being a very relationship-oriented business. And I see the film sets where everyone has a last name that has had honorifics applied to it. And I know that for a lot of people starting out, that’s daunting. And I’m not going to pretend that nepotism isn’t extremely alive and well — butI do think it’s a business in which you really can work your way up from the bottom, and hard work is noticed and rewarded.

4. I have a 25-year-old daughter, and she loves going to the movies, and she goes all the time, and she bemoans the fact that there’s just not enough to see. We’re in this kind of crazy place: There’s not enough to see, but we’re not making a whole lot. Except for superhero movies. 

5. We’re in a real doom and gloom moment right now. But on the other hand, what keeps happening in this business is something just comes out of left field. A movie just suddenly appears and people gravitate towards it. And you think to yourself, “I didn’t see that coming – I didn’t even know there was an audience for that.”

But somehow that movie tapped into something that nobody else tapped into, and that keeps happening. We have to be really original. That’s the only thing that keeps us alive. 

Christine Vachon on Producer Credits

6. There’s slightly more concern for work-life balance than in the ’80s when I was a PA. The hours, while still crazy, aren’t really as crazy as they were.There’s a little bit more acknowledgement and respect for better working environments. 

7. We should probably talk a little bit about producers. I’m a member of a group called Producers United, and I think we’re sort of at an inflection point around producers. And of course, I could do the “waah, we’re underpaid and underappreciated” and all of that. But I do feel like producers have hit a little bit of a breaking point. 

We really need an acknowledgement and understanding of what producers actually do. If you need a movie financed, and somebody comes and says, “I’ll give you half your budget, but I need a co-director credit,” the answer is, “You’re out of your fucking mind.” If they say, “I need a co-writing credit,” same answer: “You didn’t write it, you didn’t direct it, so why would I share my credit with you?” 

And they both have guilds that protect them and make sure that that doesn’t happen. But if somebody comes to a producer and says, I’m gonna give you half your budget, but I want a producer credit, our answer is usually “OK,” because there isn’t really a mechanism in place to protect our craft, and and that’s hard.

Main image: Christine Vachon. Photo by Brian Bowen Smith

But he didn’t just want to scare people.

“Shortly after Oculus, it occurred to me that someday my kids are gonna interrogate my work, and I asked myself, ‘What message are you leaving for them?’" he told MovieMaker. "A lot of my work started to change because of it. I was thrilled early on to just make scary stories with really dark endings, but the more I thought about my kids being exposed to hopeless stories, the more uncomfortable with that I became.”

Flanagan gained more and more acclaim with films like Hush, Before I Wake, Ouija: Origin of Evil, and two Stephen King adaptations, 2017’s Gerald’s Game and 2019’s Doctor Sleep. He also scored TV successes with five Netflix shows over the last seven years: The Haunting of Hill House, The Haunting of Bly Manor, Midnight Mass, The Midnight Club, and the Fall of the House of Usher. 

Along the way, he says, he began to “prioritize telling stories that emphasize hope, empathy, and bravery.” His new film, The Life of Chuck, exemplifies those values while bringing along all the lessons he’s learned. Starring Tom Hiddleston, it’s another Stephen King adaptation — one that emphasizes humanity over horror.

“I think the world is a terrifying place, and I think my kids will experience horror and fear and anxiety on this planet in a way that is more intense than I did by the time they’re my age,” says Flanagan. “It’s really important for me that I tell scary stories, but I try to tell them in a way that will encourage the viewer and my kids, if they ever really dig into them, to find ways to be brave and to hold on to empathy and forgiveness and hope, even when things are dark and terrifying.”

For our latest Things I've Learned as a MovieMaker feature, Mike Flanagan talked with us about genre, learning from a RuPaul project, and success in sobriety. His thoughts are below.—M.M.  

Mike Flanagan: Things I've Learned as a Moviemaker

1. Sci-fi is a question. Comedies are a balm. I had a conversation with Guillermo del Toro for Netflix where I said the horror genre is a “mirror,” and Guillermo added: “Hatred and fear are mirrors. Love is a window into another world.” I want to add some thoughts about genres. Sci-fi is a question. Sci-fi is pondering what could be or what might happen. Comedies are a balm. Comedies are a release and an escape.

2. The scare isn’t the point of a horror film. I think the scare is the least important thing and the scare tends to be the easiest thing. I used to believe the most important thing was putting someone face to face with something that really fundamentally frightens them, whether it’s the unknown or an uncomfortable fact about human nature — the monsters within and without. These days, I think the answer is more important than the scare. The way to deal with that horror is more important.

Also Read: Phantom of the Paradise Stage Musical in the Works (Exclusive)

3. Your greatest filmmaking lesson can come from anywhere: like editing a music video for RuPaul. I gave myself five years in Los Angeles to try to make something happen, and nine years later, it hadn’t. I was working full-time as a reality TV editor, but it turned out to be terrific skill-building. 

I learned how to construct a story out of thin air and raw footage on a ridiculous timeline. I learned how to fabricate emotions or an arc even if something didn’t exist in my bins. And it made me better at everything. As a director, it made me capable of knowing what we need to capture so I have everything I need in the cutting room.

One of my favorite reality TV projects I got to work on was editing RuPaul’s video for “Jealous Of My Boogie." The music video incorporated moments that rhymed with each other from that season of RuPaul’s Drag Race. And that’s a style of editing that I’ve maintained over the years. A lot of how you try to create a singular story that is meant to cover a long landscape of time — believe it or not — worked for that video and carried me over into Absentia and Oculus. That’s also some of the most fun I ever had editing, and now I’ve got the song stuck in my head again.

4. Film school isn’t necessary, but studying film is essential. I’ve seen movies people make with their phones that are riveting, and I’ve seen very expensive senior thesis films out of major film programs that aren’t quite working. 

The more you understand what’s come before, the more you appreciate how this editing software on your computer or your phone evolved from a flatbed film editing suite, it only makes you better.

5. I find that coming up with a vision for a story can be pretty humbling. “Vision” is one of those words I think is really overused and thrown around in the industry. I think the actual idea of a vision for a project, in my opinion, is a very simple thing. It’s just as simple as what you can imagine — it’s just this waking dream, this imaginary light show that plays in your mind. To try to take that out of your brain and put it onto an external screen takes hundreds of people to synchronize with you. 

It erupts naturally in your mind, and then the struggle is, how do you put it into words? How do you get it onto a page? How do you explain it to your director of photography? How do you explain it to your actors? And understanding that each one of them is going to bring something to it that you could never imagine. 

That kind of beautiful harmony of all of these ideas and all of these visions makes for the symphony that is a movie or TV show.

6. Often, the solution to creative conflicts is something no one has considered. If there’s a profound disagreement or a profound lack of synchronicity between myself and a collaborator, it can be incredibly frustrating. It’s that feeling of, “Why don’t you see things the way I see them?” 

It’s a fundamental human feeling. The amazing thing about collaborative art is that often the right answer is something neither of you has considered. If we’re really out of sync, maybe the solution is to step back and try to approach it together from a different perspective and find something that isn’t what we thought it was, rather than trying to talk the other person into our perspective. 

I agree with Roger Ebert when he said movies are “a machine that generates empathy.” They create it in viewers. They can create it in their makers too.

7. Sobriety changed my life for the better. Including my work. Sobriety changed the kinds of stories I wanted to tell. It created an enormous well of patience and sympathy and empathy — for myself, for my characters, for my collaborators, for everyone — the audience included.

One of the biggest things I was worried about when I was in the throes of addiction and contemplating sobriety was this deep-rooted fear that I wouldn’t be able to write or direct or deliver a piece of work if alcohol wasn’t involved in some way. I was such a creature of ritual — the bottle of wine during long writing sessions, the after-work drinks with cast and crew, the camaraderie that created. There was a real panic in me that the quality of my work would suffer immediately if I removed alcohol — that alcohol made me more creative, more social, more dynamic, more energetic.

The exact opposite turned out to be true. I’ve never been more productive. I’ve never been happier with the quality of my work. I’ve never been better to work with than since I got sober.

The Life of Chuck is now in theaters, from NEON.

Main image: Mike Flanagan directs a scene in The Life of Chuck.

But he says that if a film ever turns out exactly as he planned it, he’ll be deeply disappointed.

“No, no, no, no. We don’t want that. Then I’ve failed. You have to find it in the moment. That’s the magic of film… You conjure things up,” he says. “I think of Miles Davis writing a piece of music, but then within the moment of the recording, things will happen that can alter and reshape and redirect the piece. That’s what you want. It’s life.”

The British filmmaker’s latest, Blitz, which he wrote, directed and produced, tells the story of a child (Elliot Heffernan) trying to reunite with his mother (Saoirse Ronan) during the Nazi bombings of London. With scale and heart, it shows a side of history rarely seen on film. 

For our latest Things I’ve Learned as a Moviemaker, Steve McQueen explains about how he makes his films feel so alive — such as a scene in his magnificent 2020 Lovers Rock, about a 1980 house party, in which he just let the cameras roll as the cast became swept up in the music. The most important quality for a filmmaker, he says, is the truth.— M.M. 

Steve McQueen on Trust, Spontaneity and Truth

1. I’m quite meticulous about certain things as far as craft is concerned. But that goes out the window. The most important thing is you as a person… emotion or truth is way more important than any skill or any craft. I’ve seen films that have not been technically perfect, but they’re often the ones that sing to me.

2. I didn’t know there were any rules about filmmaking. Honestly, is this good or bad? That’s the only rule I know. Even if that’s a rule, I don’t know. You’ve got to allow yourself to sort of trust a situation. … I’m interested in what the narrative tells me, what it wants to do, how it should be shaped.

3. I don’t think you can evoke spontaneity — you’ve just got to be spontaneous. If you want to talk about Lovers Rock, people were very comfortable with each other, people forgot the camera. What happened to people behind the camera was very similar to what happened in front of the camera. There was a sort of infectious quality to the situation. People were becoming their parents or their uncles or aunts. …. And people were enjoying each other, so that created a certain kind of atmosphere, where sort of all I had to do was roll the camera — action — and just keep it rolling and catch things. 

4. Sometimes one doesn’t know what they want until they see it. I don’t storyboard because I’m not a cartoonist, I’m a filmmaker. I only storyboard action sequences. Because they’re expensive.

Also Read: Steve McQueen on Blitz and 'War Through a Child's Eyes'

5. Perfection is overvalued. It’s about a vision. It’s about a feeling. It’s more about a feeling than a vision, because you’ll find the vision with the feeling. 

6. It’s about having a great crew, but also it’s about people believing in you. You’ve got to get people to believe in you. If you’ve got people believing you, then you’re halfway. Then, of course, you have to execute.

7. If I were to give advice to a young filmmaker starting up, it’s to just go for it. Go there. Go with two guns blazing. If you’re making a first film, do it as if it’s gonna be your first film and also your last film. What have you got to lose? When I made Hunger, that was my mentality. … Let me do what I need to do, because I’m never going to get the opportunity again. 

Blitz is now streaming on Apple TV+.

Main image: Steve McQueen talks to Elliot Heffernan on the set of Blitz. Photo by Parisa Taghizadeh. Courtesy of Apple

The film is based on Rachel Yoder’s 2021 novel about an exhausted mom who finds herself turning into a dog — and getting in touch with her canine instincts. Amy Adams and production company Annapurna optioned the horror-comedy before the book was published and asked Heller — a screenwriter, director and actor — about directing the film adaptation, starring Adams. 

“I had just had my second child and I was very isolated. My husband was in production, and so I was home alone with two kids for the first time, and reading this book about a stay-at-home mom and motherhood was very cathartic,” Heller tells MovieMaker.

“So I started adapting that book, kind of in the crux of mothering two kids with no help and no support, really, in the middle of Covid. It became this sort of safe haven for me to put all my frustrations and all of the parts of me that felt like I was slightly losing my mind right into the script.”

Heller’s films include the 2015 comedy The Diary of a Teenage Girl,starring Bel Powley, 2018’s forgery drama Can You Ever Forgive Me, starring Melissa McCarthy, and 2019’s biographical A Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood starring Tom Hanks as Fred Rogers.

Her acting credits include Netflix’s 2020 chess drama The Queen’s Gambit and 2021’s Peacock comedy series MacGruber, co-createdby her husband, The Lonely Island veteran Jorma Taccone.

In our latest Things I’ve Learned as Moviemaker, Heller talks about the lonely parts of filmmaking, loving what’s on the screen, and the myth of magic. — M.M.

Marielle Heller on Nightbitch and Being a Lone Wolf

1. When I talk to filmmakers who are making their first movie, I feel, sometimes, like I'm a voice of doom and gloom, because I really warn them how alone they're going to feel, and that that's normal. Nobody's going to help you as much as you expect them to help you when you make your first movie.

Nobody's going to care as much as you care… It really requires you to be the engine and to recognize that you're going to be the person who cares more than anybody about every detail, and that can be a very lonely feeling. That amount of responsibility falling on your shoulders, I think, is not for the faint of heart.

2. There's a sort of false narrative that's probably been fed from fiction and movies that if you're brilliant enough, you'll just sit down and write a brilliant novel or a brilliant screenplay, and it's just not how it works.

You have to work and work and work and rewrite and write bad things and bad things and bad things, and then eventually write something decent, and then be able to tell the difference and be able to not screw it up on your next rewrite. It's just work... there's no real magic to it.

3. Making movies is horrifically painful, and it hurts during a lot of parts of it. I have a very complicated relationship with it in a certain way. I love production. I love being on set… but I hate prep. I hate the eight or 10 weeks before shooting, where it's so important, but all you're doing is planning, and it's all anticipation with no satisfaction.

It's just this buildup of thinking through everything that could possibly go wrong once you start shooting. I find it torturous.

4. Gregg Araki, who was one of my advisors at the Sundance Lab, told me: When you’re looking at the monitor and you're looking at the screen, do not call “action” until you love everything you see. It's a very hard thing to follow, and it is very important. You get to decide when it's done, when it's ready, and you have to be looking with such a discerning eye.

5. I think the goal of filmmaking is to reflect humanity and make people feel less alone, and tell stories that make people feel more connected to each other. There's some greater source out there that we're all trying to find our connection to, and I think that's what art can do at its best. 

Nightbitch arrives in theaters December 6 from Searchlight Pictures. 

Main image: Marielle Heller and Amy Adams behind the scenes of Nightbitch. Photo by Anne Marie Fox, courtesy of Searchlight Pictures

Ackerly, a co-founder of LuckyChap Entertainment with wife Margot Robbie, knows about getting into people’s hearts — he’s one of the executive producers of Barbie. 

“It meant so much to me that he thought that, but it also struck me as something I really wanted to do as a filmmaker,” she says. “Get inside people's hearts, regardless of the story or genre.”

My Old Ass, which Park wrote and directed, is the story of Elliott (Maisy Stella) who meets her older self (Aubrey Plaza). After raves at Sundance, it was quickly acquired by Amazon MGM Studios. The film follows her feature writing-directing debut, 2022’s The Fallout, and the 2017 short film “Lucy In My Eyes,” winner of the Austin Film Festival’s Grand Jury Prize for Best Narrative Short. 

She learned filmmaking on the job as an actor: She started at 18, earning credits including Dog Days, Young Sheldon, Jane the Virgin, Happy Endings, Entourage, and The Secret Life of the American Teenager.   

In our latest Things I’ve Learned as a Moviemaker, she shares advice about learning, feeling, and believing.—M.M.

 1. Everyone has something to say. If you have the desire to tell it in the format of a film... do it. I wish they let more kids and people with zero filmmaking experience make movies because I think the industry needs some fresh takes. If you’re old enough to write a script and hold a camera and you have something you want to say, that's enough life experience. 

2. People fall into filmmaking from all different areas of "training." I certainly felt like, being an actor, I wasn't qualified to become a writer or a director — but I think I had learned more than I had realized just being on sets and reading so many scripts and working with so many different actors and directors.

But I felt embarrassed that I didn't know everything about cameras or lenses or cinema history or lighting. So, I just try to surround myself with people who are collaborative and do know what they're talking about in their area of expertise and trust them and work as a team. 

Also Read: Aubrey Plaza Was the Class Clown. Now She's Everyone's Favorite Criminal

Megan Park on My Old Ass and Making Something You Love

3. Don't overthink. Trust your gut. Don't try to be like anyone else. Just make something you love and see what happens. 

4. A lot of incredible artists I've worked with have influenced me, as well as many I have never met, but I think I'm most influenced by emotions: Feelings. Worries. Fears. Joys. Whenever I'm feeling a strong emotion, my imagination kind of goes wild and that's when stories and characters begin to emerge. 

5. I probably spend the most time editing. Which is funny. For My Old Ass we spent five or six weeks shooting, but then twice that editing. The movie is truly three things. The script. Shooting it on set. And what you do with what you shot on set in the edit. It evolves so much and I always say I learn way more about filmmaking in the edit than anywhere else.

As grueling as the edit can be, it's also a really magical, creative process with the right collaborators.

6. Eat. People laugh because I eat so much when I'm on set. It's the only way I can survive a shoot. So if you see me on set I am absolutely snacking or drinking coffee, all day long. 

7. You don’t have to be a cinephile and know all the cool old movies and directors. I grew up in a house without a TV. I just saw Forrest Gump. (Loved it.) But you don't need to be super well versed in cinema history to make a great movie.

My Old Ass arrives in theaters Friday from Amazon MGM Studios.

Main image: Megan Park directs Maisy Stella in My Old Ass. Photo by Marni Grossman. Photos courtesy of Amazon MGM Studios.

“I have been watching Maya turn into an extremely exciting and formidable artist over the last 25 years, and the film was her idea. She kind of had a passion for this character that she wanted to play, and the actor in me really loves that — when a movie is kind of built around an actor's fire, so to speak, I find that really exciting,” he says. “What was it like directing her? It was perfect.”

The elder Hawke has starred in unforgettable roles: the shy Todd Anderson in Peter Weir’s Dead Poets Society, the troubled pastor in Paul Schrader’s First Reformed, and most recently, as a father who is rendered useless without technology in Sam Esmail’s Netflix disaster movie Leave the World Behind. He’s been nominated for an Academy Award four times: twice for best adapted screenplay, alongside Julie Delpy and Richard Linklater, for Before Sunset (2004) and Before Midnight (2013), and twice for best supporting actor in Antoine Fuqua’s 2002 crime drama Training Day and Linklater’s 2014 Boyhood.

Since his 2001 feature directorial debut Chelsea Walls, which followed artists living in New York’s famous Chelsea Hotel, he’s often focused on the lives of creatives, making documentaries like Seymour: An Introduction about the pianist Seymour Bernstein; The Last Movie Stars, a docuseries about actors Paul Newman and Joanne Woodward; Blaze, a biographical drama about Texas outlaw music legend Blaze Foley, and The Hottest State, a story about an actor who falls in love with a singer-songwriter.

Wildcat is another portrayal of an artist. 

“I got extremely interested in how I might be able to use O'Connor as a kind of launching pad for a film in the conversation about where human creativity and faith intersect. Is human creativity an act of faith?” he wonders.

Below, Ethan Hawke Tells Us What He’s Learned About Making Movies

As told to Margeaux Sippell

Also Read: 10 Quentin Tarantino Projects That Could Replace The Movie Critic as His Next Film

1. A lot of the first-time directors I've worked with often fall prey to what I call the talent myth or the Orson Welles complex. Everybody wants to kind of believe this narrative that they're born a genius and that if everybody else would just get in line and make their dreams come true, then glory would follow. There are a couple born geniuses a generation, and to assume that you're one of them is true folly. You can't have confidence without experience. If you are pretending to be confident, that's the worst kind of person to be around, as far as I'm concerned — a kind of false bravado. Some of the best directors I've worked with are shockingly humble. There's this kind of myth of the auteur. Richard Linklater and Sidney Lumet are shockingly humble people, always interested in learning. So my advice would be that you make the movies in layers, you know? You make the movie while you're writing it. You make the movie while you're scouting it. You make the movie while you're casting it. You don't make the movie on the shoot days. That's one coat of paint. There's a lot of room to make mistakes. If you're humble and you keep working, you can fix them. You don't know what you don't know. So the thing about being a first time director is you just have a ton of blind spots, and the more you surround yourself with good people, competent people, experienced people, the more blind spots you're going to see.

2. Anytime you make up rules in the arts, you're proved a fool. Because then all of a sudden, Bob Dylan appears at 19 spouting unbelievable truths with no experience. Like, where did that come from? How do you write some of those early songs? Our generation has grown up with movies and television as the primary art form of our age. It's no longer literature. I mean, we grew up thinking in images, and we're all making movies in our head all day long. And so focusing on what makes each shot remarkable. Why should anybody pay money to watch this image, and how do the different departments connect to each other? The really great filmmakers really understand the unity between performance and costume and photography and music and editing. When all of the tools are being used, you can make something incredibly powerful, but they all need to be focused to the same end, and they all need to be disciplined and discerning. And then sometimes you need to throw it all away and just have fun. I mean, it's such a mysterious game, making films. The older I get, the more weary I become of advice.

3. A lot of people have this idea that they're chasing magic. A lot of directors, young and old, are scared to rehearse or they think they know what the word rehearsal means. Rehearsing really means, you know, put simply, to re-hear. It's about us being together and inviting the collective imagination to take place. When people hear rehearsal, there's this old stagecraft idea in their head, like people are going to get out and block the scenes and get on their feet and act it out. There's this real fear that you're going to lose that magic spark that happens between actors when things happen for the first time. And first of all, it's just not true. People are good at it. It's like saying, that magic spark when Michael Jordan can hit a free throw. No, he hits a free throw all the time because he practices. One of the great experiences of my life was on the Before trilogy with Rick and Julie. Rick has this film education that's huge, as far as his knowledge of Bresson and Fassbinder and the history of cinema, and he's a real scholar that way. It's really fun to be around somebody with that kind of depth of knowledge about the camera and its use in storytelling. Julie and I had a lot of experience with the theater, and we really enjoyed rehearsing. The whole trick of those movies is creating the illusion of improvisation, which really — those are the most rehearsed movies I've ever done by far, and people think they're improvised, or that we just kind of did it, you know? And it's because Rick isn't afraid of being in a room together and talking and seeing, ‘Why would you want to make this movie? Let me tell you why I want to make this movie. What do we think the secrets are here? And what are we trying to do?’

4. I was in a bookstore once — not a kid, I was probably like 21 or something — when Sidney Lumet, his book Making Movies had come out. I just sat on the floor of the Barnes & Noble and read the whole thing. Because he's so practical — he talks about making movies the way somebody might talk about making a rug. It's just all brass tacks. And, yes, sometimes magic happens, but it really, it happens for those who work hard a lot. I love Dylan's whole line about that. It's like, yeah, sometimes inspiration comes, but it comes a lot more often if you're constantly writing songs, trying. So I think there's a big misconception around the rehearsal process and how to prepare for making a movie, and how directors and producers can invite their collaborators into their mindset, because they're kind of scared that your ideas are going to negatively impact their idea so they'll be forced to change, and they don't want to change. And with the best directors I've known, they know that they are in charge, so they're not fragile about it. They're willing to listen and hear, and you can collectively make a director's vision a lot stronger. My favorite Brando line is that you have to spiritually marry your director and just become an extension of their imagination, and then you can really help them make their movie and find ways to express yourself inside their movie as opposed to being in opposition.

5. I’ve made a lot of movies with Richard Linklater. So, when we're on set together it doesn't feel like such a big deal, so the pressure comes down. Elia Kazan used to write about this a lot — and this is what I mean about mistaking what rehearsal is. Kazan would spend a lot of time getting to know his actors, just getting to know each other, feeling comfortable with each other, not feeling like you work for each other but understanding what the clay of their life is, what made them want to be an actor, what's driving them. Now you can get inside their process with them, and they can get inside yours. That's rehearsal. You don't need to be staging the scene the whole time. Sometimes it's better to go watch a movie together, go bowling together and talk about your last breakup together and create a kind of safe space for people to be vulnerable and funny and passionate. But it's safe because it's in service of this project.

6. I've spent years and years of my life on film sets. I mean, I made my first movie in 1984. That's 40 years ago. I've made a lot of films and I've been in a lot of plays, and I've put a lot of hours into this profession, and so my vantage point is largely as a performer. But because of that, I've seen so many sets that are really well produced, and I've seen so many that are really poorly produced. I've seen brilliant directors, and I've seen egomaniacs fall on their face, and I've seen egomaniacs triumph. I've seen people who are really kind and funny and sweet make really bad movies, and I've seen them make really good movies. You start to realize that there really are no rules. It's about figuring out who you are, and what you might have to offer, and what your strengths might be and accessing those strengths and having humility to know where the weak spots in your education are.

7. The thing that I don't understand — and this makes me sound old — but what I don't understand about young people today is why they don't watch more movies. I mean, they're perfectly willing to binge watch, for weeks of their life, something they know is really super okay, and the Criterion Channel is right there. Like, they could be watching Badlands as we speak. They don't know who Fassbinder is and they don't know who Éric Rohmer is and they don't know who Kurosawa is. They think they're modern and they haven't seen Do the Right Thing. Are you kidding? It's on your damn phone, watch it! But they'd somehow rather watch some TV show that came out yesterday that they won't remember. I say all that not to sound crotchety, but there's so much excellence in the past, so many of these thoughts of what we're all going through emotionally and what we're looking for — authenticity in our lives and healing — all these common threads of humanity people have been talking about for centuries. Cinema is a young art form, but it's 100 years old now, and there's a lot of great work, and you can rip it off madly. The fun thing about having a great DP is the more you explain what you're trying to drive at, they can turn you on to, ‘Well, you know who's also into that idea — let's watch this film. Let's steal that shot. That's a great shot.’ I really enjoy that. But I'm always amazed at how often young people who say, 'I love movies and I want to make movies' don't actually watch movies.
8. I'm really interested in how a person's work can inspire and motivate them forward in their own life right now. That's what I love. I love when I find a part or a film like Wildcat where the work on it feels like it's connected to the work of my life.

Wildcat arrives in theaters May 3, from Oscilloscope Laboratories.

Main Image: Ethan and Maya Hawke behind the scenes of Wildcat. Courtesy of Oscilloscope Laboratories.

This story originally appeared in the Spring 2024 print edition of MovieMaker Magazine.

The film, one of our favorites of 2023, follows Gracie (Julianne Moore) and Joe (Charles Melton), who started a shocking sexual relationship when she was 36 and he was 13. Twenty years later, the couple live together in the suburbs, apparently happily, until they meet a famous actress, Elizabeth (Natalie Portman), whose research to play Gracie in an upcoming movie disrupts their supposed bliss.

Moore has frequently collaborated with Moore, including in his films Safe (1995), Far From Heaven (2002) and Wonderstruck (2017), but his longest creative collaboration has been with Christine Vachon, who started producing his films with his Superstar follow-up, 1991’s Poison. 

Long relationships are at the heart of his approach to filmmaking: Haynes believes artifice in movies can reveal deeper truths, but artificial friendships in the industry will result in a short career. 

He participated in the latest edition of Things I’ve Learned as a Moviemaker during NewFest, an LGBTQ+ film festival in New York City, where he received the Queer Visionary Award.—M.M.

As Told to Joshua Encinias

1. Building trust with your collaborators allows you to shoot intimate scenes safely. I had a conversation with Natalie Portman and Charles Melton about their sex scene in May December and whether they wanted to bring an intimacy coordinator onto the set. I talked to them separately so they could each safely tell me how they felt without the other person being there. They were actually fine and felt comfortable without a coordinator. In fact, they preferred there not be a person involved. 

2. When filming sex scenes, you must be specific about how to keep your actors safe and supported. When I have done sex scenes with actors, it’s important to be really specific about what you want them to do; what you want to show and not show, and how you achieve it. Even when actors have done sex scenes before or had a lot of experience with them, I think it’s still challenging. It’s always best to just make everybody feel that we’re in as protected a place as possible. 

3. Don’t be afraid to allow your project the freedom to show exactly what the story needs. When I said my upcoming movie with Joaquin Phoenix will be NC-17, I mean that we need to have the freedom to depict the content. I don’t really know yet how much we need to see of specific sexual content in the movie, but the content itself definitely gets into areas that might disturb or provoke some viewers. But we want to have the freedom to do what is called for in the script and not have a limitation on that. 

4. When you acknowledge a story’s restrictions, you can challenge the audience’s expectations and respect them in the same scene. I’m very interested to have it known that my film is coming out of a narrative tradition, or genre, that the audience brings knowledge to from the outset.

We bring expectations and all kinds of sophistication to what we see on the screen. And to me, that’s something to fully embrace as a director. To allow the viewer’s expectations to be respected, but also challenged. The frames ultimately are exposing the fact that what’s coming to you in the movie comes from somewhere else. 

5. You don’t have to make your movie cinéma vérité to tell its truth.I think a lot of filmmakers want to dispel the consciousness of genre or frames, and I don’t. I don’t think accepting their restrictions interrupts your emotional experience. Sometimes knowing that there’s a frame around it almost makes the emotional response surprise you, because you don’t see it coming. You think you might be savvier than what you’re seeing, and then you actually find yourself innocently open up to an emotional experience.

Todd Haynes on the Art of Long Relationships

6. To have long relationships in moviemaking, find the people who share your storytelling instincts and become real friends, not just contacts in your phone. The relationship with my producer Christine Vachon started so long ago. We found common instincts in each other for the kind of film, art, and storytelling that attracted us. That was fortified and given great depth by the fact that we were living in a crisis around HIV and AIDS that was identifying certain people and singling them out. 

It took our entire community to stand up and do everything possible to change the research and development of medication for that illness, but also to change the minds of Americans and people around the world about gay people. And we did. That fused a very deep bond between Christine and me. I can’t imagine my career without my relationship with Christine, and I think she feels the same way about me.

Also Read: Ridley Scott: Things I've Learned as a Moviemaker

7. Be driven by the events of your time. It was the backdrop of AIDS that gave the stories that Christine and I wanted to make a sense of urgency. It also gave our films an audience and a context to be seen. That ultimately brought attention to the work we were doing and brought consideration to it that may not have happened at different times in the culture.

8. Have a strong vision for your movie and be radically open to input. Christine says that I have very strong ideas and instincts and that I exert a great deal of work to communicate to everyone working on my movies. I make it visible in my image books, shot lists, and in the preparation that I do for each film. But she says that at the same time, I can be more open to ideas and input from the people around me than some other directors for whom it’s more threatening. 

9. Clear communiction and relationships are the key to building your career in filmmaking. Every film I’ve made is a huge risk because I don’t repeat the type of movies I made before, so you never know how things are going to turn out. You just do the very best that you can to make these ideas be manifest.

Filmmaking is an intensely collaborative process, so communication and relationships with your partners in the process is how it happens. I’ve learned that the best collaborations are when your partner feels like they’re standing on something very solid. Then they can give you so much of what they do and what they know. Maybe it’s easier said than done. It comes out of practice and experience and trusting yourself. 

May December is now streaming on Netflix.

Main image: (L-R) Charles Melton as Joe, Todd Haynes, and Julianne Moore as Gracie Atherton-Yoo. Photo credit: François Duhamel, courtesy of Netflix.

In the past, he explains, “some difficulty always came from producers and the studio. You know, they never understand. They tell you, ‘Oh, I love this movie.’

“But actually, they didn’t know how I worked. They keep me in so much unnecessary trouble.”

Silent Night comes from, among others, Thunder Road Films, the production company behind the John Wick franchise, and is Woo’s first American project since 2003’s Paycheck. It is a Christmas revenge tale that stars Joel Kinnaman as Brian Godlock, a father who loses his son and voice from gang violence on Christmas Eve. 

To emphasize Godlock’s loss, Woo uses almost no dialogue in the film. Instead, the director uses visuals, movement, and sound to tell his story. The film is a fascinating project for a director who has spent so much of his life creating unforgettable action sequences that transcend language, and even words. His skill as a visual storyteller of virtuosic set pieces explains his popularity from Hong Kong to Hollywood.

John Woo started out as a script supervisor for Singapore’s Cathay Studios and then became an assistant director at Hong Kong’s Shaw Studios. Bruce Lee’s films inspired him to make his own brand of action films, and his directorial debut, 1974’s kung-fu drama The Young Dragons, was choreographed by Jackie Chan. His run of Hong Kong hits eventually drew Hollywood attention, which led to his directing Jean-Claude Van Damme in 1993’s Hard Target. 

He followed that with 1996’s Broken Arrow, starring John Travolta and Christian Slater, followed by 1997’s passionate, gloriously ambitious Face/Off, in which Travolta plays an FBI agent forced to switch faces with his nemesis, played by Nicolas Cage. In addition to staging wildly audacious action sequences, he presided over his stars hilariously hamming it up in mercilessly entertaining imitations of one another.

Woo’s subsequent films have included the American projects Mission: Impossible 2, with Tom Cruise, in 2000, and Windtalkers, againwith Cage,in 2002 — as well as the Chinese Red Cliff, released in two parts in 2008 and 2009, and the Chinese-Hong Kong production The Crossing, released in two parts in 2014 and 2015. 

For our latest Things I’ve Learned as a Moviemaker, John Woo talks about his belief that today’s moviemakers have more freedom than ever, and suggests what to do if you don’t have a mentor. He also explains his commitment to making stunts secondary to story.—M.M.

As told to Joshua Encinias.

1. You don’t need a mentor to make movies — but you need to watch great movies. I don’t think it’s necessary to have a mentor. You can learn a lot from other great filmmakers. Martin Scorsese’s use of slow motion taught me how to use it to create an emotional moment. So I took him as my mentor, in a way, and also I took Sam Peckinpah and Stanley Kubrick.

2. Making a movie without dialogue forces you to use images and sound to tell your story.  It’s hard to use a different technique or style to tell a story. For Silent Night, we only used visuals and sound, no dialogue, to make the audience understand the whole story. You do it with how you use the camera and the extra space to express ideas and emotions to move the audience.

You have to be very careful and precise. If you’re successful, you will hold the audience from the beginning to the end and keep them excited about everything without feeling they are missing something. 

3. Today’s filmmakers have more freedom to make the movie you want than when I started.When I started, everything was so simple. I worked with old-fashioned people, but now I work with so many geniuses. We have much more freedom.

Silent Night was my first independent film. It felt great! That gave me more creative freedom. There were not many people on set. There was not much interference in my work. I could do my own work and shoot what I feel. It was pretty easy, even though there was not much time and never enough money. But we worked so freely. On a studio picture there are so many people. Too many voices. 

John Woo on Fight Scenes

4. Young filmmakers who want to make action movies must know that a human story is more important than fight scenes. I always remember Akira Kurosawa, the Japanese master. He said that if there isn’t a human story or humanity in your movie, then the fight scene would mean nothing. You should have a good story before you have a good action sequence. The action is to serve the drama. Every single action should come from the drama and the emotion. 

5. Communicating your vision is often the most difficult hurdle to overcome in making a movie.I think the most difficult thing is getting everybody to understand what I’m thinking, what I need, what I really want. In my work with some people, they couldn’t get the idea of what I’m thinking. So it is very hard. I try hard to make everybody understand, but I’m not good at language. Sometimes it’s hard to explain the meaning of a scene. 

6. You have to find people who are all in sync because a good movie only has one vision. I find a team who’s familiar with my work, and then find actors who don’t need me to talk to them much. I give them some very simple instructions. I really need to work with somebody who understands my style. 

7. There are no Chinese movies. There are no American movies. There are only movies.I have never made a Chinese film or an American film. In my vision, they’re always the same kind of movie. I don’t care if I’m working with a Chinese actor or an English actor. In my mind, the movie is representing me.

I’m telling a story. Most of the time, I prefer creating on set. I work with my instinct. Every shot, every piece of action, of performance, came from inside me. Instinct is very important to me and in China or America, I always work in the same way.

John Woo on Faith

8. If you bring your faith to set, let it inspire love, not rigid limitations.I was educated as a Christian when I was young, and what I’ve learned is it’s about love. Love your neighbor and love your enemy, love your friend, your family. That kind of thing is always on my mind and always in my vision and belief. So when I’m making a film, it’s pretty funny, I forget about my religion. I just feel like myself when I’m making a movie.

I never think what would the religion think about the movie. I wouldn’t give it any limitations that you should do that or you should not do that. Or that you should send some kind of a message about your religion. I feel pretty safe and pretty free while I’m making movies. 

9. Make your actor more than a collaborator. Become their friend.The way I work with actors, first of all, I have to find a way to know everything about them. How they work, how they speak. When I’m thinking of a shot or anything for a scene, I feel like I’m working with my friend. If you’re working with your friend, we don’t have to say much.

Deep inside our hearts it seems to me like Nicolas Cage and I have known each other for a long time. Sometimes he comes up with an idea, like a joke. He always comes up with some good ideas, and I let him put them into a scene to try to help make it work better.

Silent Night is now in theaters and available on video on demand, from Lionsgate.

Main image: John Woo (L) with Scott Mescudi, aka Kid Cudi, on the Silent Night set. Photo by Carlos Latapi, courtesy of Lionsgate.

His lack of an Oscar reflects poorly on the Academy, not on him. And at 85, he is hard at work on a slew of new films, including Gladiator 2.

As we celebrate the release of his new Napoleon, Ridley Scott graces Things I’ve Learned as a Moviemaker by tracing his path through art school, directing television at the BBC, advertisements, and creating some of the most stunning visuals in film. 

He believes nothing is outside of the scope of cinema. He would know. —M.M.

As told to Joshua Encinias

1. Taking a circuitous route to making movies will still give you tools to use as a moviemaker. There was no real film school when I was dreaming of making movies. There was no pathway in, so I went to an art school instead. It turned out to be really good for me. I spent seven years at art school. When you’re a painter you have to stand being alone by yourself in a room for most of the time. I decided I couldn’t.

I moved into graphic design because it more intuitively led me to visuals. I adored photography and I discovered with my camera I had a good eye. I was born with a good eye. I still had no idea this would lead to film, because it was such a dream that’s inaccessible. 

2. Having a vision is essential. Even if you’re not No. 1 on the call sheet. The vision is terribly important. I didn’t realize I had it, because my strongest asset is my eye, but I also have a good vision. I can draw the film before I even find locations, and frequently, I’ll personally do a board for the whole movie and from that board, they’ll go looking for the location. So it’s kind of a reversed action. 

3. The path of least resistance can be your direct path to becoming a director. Today people ask me, “How do you become a director?” I say, “I don’t know, just go for it and do it.” Take the least challenging path and just go up that path and adjust as you go along, which is really what I did. 

Ridley Scott on Overcoming Obstacles

4. Funnel frustration with your peers into making better work. I was highly frustrated with directors at the BBC who were not terribly visual and they became a bit intimidated by working with me. So I was asked if I wanted to do the BBC’s director’s course. I jumped into their two-month course, and from that was given a show. 

5. Stay calm. Embrace stress. My BBC show was live action, in black and white, and you had to work with six cameras. You’re sitting in a gallery, which is like a huge room with seven monitors all moving and shifting and changing focus. That’s where I learned to, fundamentally, stay calm and embrace stress. It may also be a wonderful suggestion to utilize products like the Postless Vape Pens Collection because it can provide a soothing ritual that helps you relax.

6. Mistakes are part of the filmmaking learning curve. The scariest thing at the beginning of my career was suddenly being turned loose, without any warning, into a rehearsal room with people called actors. I had no training with actors at all but I took the reins on a show that was quite popular at the time.

This room full of actors who stared at me like I just walked off the moon because I didn’t know what to say. I felt my way forward making many mistakes and blunders. But the continual thing is the learning curve. That’s the way. 

Ridley Scott on Vision

7. Paintings — even pictures of paintings — can be your greatest teacher. I think, because I’m a visualist, I tend to look at pictures like a child. I’ll go through books and books and books of paintings, replications of the time. To me, a picture is more than a thousand words — it’s everything. You can read all you want, but I think the paintings to me were the formidable instruction, a song sheet for me. 

8. Your camera operator needs a vision, too. I think one of the most critically important things a camera operator needs is a vision. They need to have a good eye in case the director doesn’t. The director needs to have a guy with a good eye.

Frequently, the cameraman has it, but the cameraman will frequently also have very good operators, his favorite operators. It’s really a team thing. The relationship between a director, operator and the lighting cameraman becomes a partnership that moves like lightning. [Editor’s note: “lighting cameraman” has historically been used synonymously with cinematographer in British TV and film.]

9. Don’t be afraid of making commercials. After the BBC, I very quickly entered the world of advertising, which I preferred to working for an institution. I felt free and I worked on celluloid. Through that I became a very efficient and proficient camera operator. 

Those were the days when we used one camera at a time. The Duellists was made with one little Arriflex 35-IIC, a crew of 45 people and my friend, Frank Tidy. 

Alien was shot by a man named Derek Vanlint, who had never done a film before in his life. It was his first one up. But he did a lot of work as a commercial maker.

Napoleon is now in theaters from Sony Pictures Releasing, and will stream soon on Apple TV+.

Main image: Director Ridley Scott and Joaquin Phoenix on the set of Apple Original Films and Columbia Pictures theatrical release of Napoleon. Photo by Aidan Monaghan, Courtesy of Apple.

Editor's Note: Corrects typo.

He notes that their newest project, Asteroid City, “jumps back and forth between different worlds and timelines so it might be confusing for viewers.” Such big challenges keep their collaboration fresh — and so do little things like innovating new ways to create rain on screen. 

Yeoman shared his filmmaking advice with us in honor of Asteroid City, the story of Augie Steenbeck (Jason Schwartzman). Set in 1955, the film follows Steenbeck and his children as they attend Asteroid Day, which commemorates a meteorite crashing to Earth in 3007 BC. But then an alien makes first contact with the festival, upending many lives.  

Yeoman, whose credits include Drugstore Cowboy, The Squid and the Whale and Bridesmaids, began working with Wes Anderson on his first film, 1996’s Bottle Rocket, and has served as his director of photography on every live-action feature since. (Tristan Oliver shot Anderson’s stop-frame films The Fantastic Mr. Fox and Isle of Dogs.) Yeoman was nominated for an Oscar for his work on Anderson’s 2014 Grand Budapest Hotel.

In our latest Things I’ve Learned as a Moviemaker, Yeoman explains how still photography inspires his cinematography, why being unwilling to change your plans can result in too-familiar films, and how low-tech moviemaking tricks can make your work stand out. 

— As Told To Joshua Encinias

Robert Yeoman on the Asteroid City set

1. Still photography is a constant source of inspiration for me. Oftentimes, in the course of my career, I’ll bring in stills to a director as examples of composition, lighting, and to use as an inspiration for the look of a film. As a young kid, my parents gave me a little Kodak Brownie camera, and I can’t say I was a huge photographer, but I enjoyed taking pictures and looking at pictures. We used to get Life magazine and they had very famous photographers going throughout the world taking these amazing pictures. I remember I always got excited when the magazine showed up at our house and I could look at the photos and art. Still photography is still one of my passions. 

2. Being totally confident and secure in your plans often results in conventional images. I try not to over-plan things, because I want to be open to something that spontaneously might happen on set. I do make my own diagrams of camera positions and lighting ideas that I share it with my gaffer. But there’s always some nervousness when I show up in the morning, because I want to push myself to that place where you’re not sure about things. When I feel totally secure and confident and sure, I might lapse into something a little more conventional, whereas if I keep my edge, I might come up with something that’s a little more interesting visually. 

3. Be open to your collaborators introducing new ways of working. After Wes made Fantastic Mr. Fox with cinematographer Tristan Oliver, he began creating animatics in pre-production for his live-action movies. The animatics are kind of our Bible. Before we would have hand-drawn storyboards, but now we work out all the camera moves and everything in advance. Sometimes we might switch out a camera lens, but we have a very pretty clear idea when we show up what the shot’s going  to be. I actually really like it. I think everyone does, because you know exactly what you’re going do. 

Asteroid City DP Robert Yeoman on Cameras

4. Many people fall into the trap of thinking two cameras will make the shoot go faster. We only shoot one camera with Wes and a lot of the movies I do are one camera. I find that we can often move faster with one camera than with two cameras. Two cameras often means you’re getting coverage. Coverage is great, but with Wes, every shot is specific for the particular moment that he wants. A lot of great directors have a distinct style because they believe there’s one place to put a camera and to tell a story, and that’s the place we’re going to commit to. Whereas other directors might be concerned about getting a lot of coverage and they want two or three cameras. And all of a sudden, the movies start to look alike with an over, single, two shot, whatever. I think that if people just concentrate on one camera, my opinion is you’ll end up with a little more interesting movie.

5. This old adage is just true in moviemaking: Where there’s a will, there’s a way. Wes will often describe a shot he’s interested in doing, and in my head I’m thinking, “Oh my God, how are we going to do that?” But we always seem to find a way. On Asteroid City, a perfect example is there’s dollies that go sideways and in and out. Our key grip, Sanjay Sami, has these tracks that are almost like train tracks, where you can make switches to go sideways and in and out. He designed this system that allowed us to do that. 

The worst thing you can say to Wes is “That’s how we always do it.” On Moonrise Kingdom,we wanted a rain effect on the windows and so I said, “What we usually do is we put rain bars outside the windows and back light them.” And he said, “Well, I don’t want to do it that way.” So then we came up with this system of lights that have these little patterns that move across the lights. It’s a theatrical thing and has a surreal quality where you’re not sure if it’s real rain. It gives a quality to the image that makes it a little more magical. 

6. Low-tech techniques can make your movie stand out. Wes is pretty much low-tech. We rarely use techno cranes and a lot of the things that are pretty standard in today’s moviemaking. He wants to find more homemade solutions, so that’s often how we end up doing things. Even in Asteroid City, he doesn’t like to flood a set with lights. We were building the town in Spain from scratch. So I talked to Wes and Adam Stockhausen, our production designer, about putting in skylights for all the buildings where we were shooting interiors. So they put in skylights, and it allowed us to shoot day scenes without any lights. Wes loved that we didn’t use lights on the interiors. He was thrilled. 

Joining the Wes Anderson Family

7. Work out your shots and create marks for your actors using crew members. A lot of times in prep, we will work out long dolly moves with crew people standing in for the actors. We’ll put little marks on the ground so that when we have the actors we’re much more efficient.  

8. If you have a working relationship with your director like I have with Wes, it can be helpful to tactfully give your actors tips about the best way to work with the director. The last time I worked with Matt Dillon was on 1989’s Drugstore Cowboy. I hadn’t seen him for a long time, but he’s very open, very nice, and he was a little nervous about working with Wes. I gave him some tips because I want to see him succeed. He’s a nice guy and good actor. I want him to be part of this family. Wes tends to hire actors back, and I think Matt really wanted to be part of the family.

There’s no big egos on the set on a Wes movie. There’s so many big stars and everyone’s there because they want to be, and they’re pretty open and friendly. If they have questions, I’ll do my best to answer them. I don’t want to get in the middle of Wes and his actor’s relationships, but sometimes actors come to me with questions, and I’ll be honest with them and tell them what I think. 

Asteroid City is now in theaters from Focus Pictures.

Main image: Jason Schwartzman as Augie Steenbeck and Tom Hanks as Stanley Zak in writer-the Wes Anderson film Asteroid City, a Focus Features release. Photo Courtesy of Pop. 87 Productions/Focus Features

Hardwicke is best known for directing the first entry of the Twilight series, and has also directed movies as varied as Lords of Dogtown, about Southern California’s Z-Boys skating team, and The Nativity Story, about the birth of Jesus. It starred Oscar Isaac in his first lead role on screen, and adds to Hardwick’s stellar track record with young actors: She directed several other of today’s biggest stars in their earliest roles, including Robert Pattinson and Kristen Stewart in Twilight, and Evan Rachel Wood in Thirteen. 

We’re sharing her filmmaking advice in honor of Mafia Mamma, which stars Toni Collette and Monica Bellucci in the story of an American woman who inherits her Italian family’s mob empire. Below,, Catherine Hardwicke explains how acting classes are a great education, why #MeToo helped female directors more in TV than in film, and when it’s worth it to go with a non-union production.

— As Told To Joshua Encinias

1. Use your expertise, because there are many ways to break into the industry. I had training as an architect, so I worked as a production designer to make a living on other people’s films. The production designer is there from the very beginning of a movie. You get to see what the director’s thinking and help conceptualize the whole look of the film; how things can be shot by finding locations or building sets. Helping filmmakers like David O. Russell, Costa-Gavras, Richard Linklater and Cameron Crowe taught me how to make a movie. 

Catherine Hardwicke on Making a Non-Union Film

2. First-time filmmakers can go non-union, so the money you would be paid goes back into paying your crew. I was not in the Writer’s Guild or in the Director’s Guild when I made Thirteen, so we could make it non-union. We shot it in L.A., but we did get busted by the union, so we had to convert, but that was only in the last two days.

Outside the union, you could do everything very scrappy. For example, I could work for $1. That’s how much I got paid as a director. Nikki Reed and I each got $2 for the screenplay. So that kept the costs low, but you can’t do that on union shoots. You have to be paid the DGA minimum.

By Nikki and I deciding that we weren’t going to take any money away from the production of Thirteen, all of that money went into the film. We scrounged up $1.5 million, which is still a lot of money, but every bit of that was used because we paid the crew with it. 

Also Read: Ti West: Things I've Learned as a Moviemaker

3. Ultimately, problems on set are up to the director to fix. My first studio movie was Lords of Dogtown, and we decided to do the hardest scene on day one, which is this surfing scene at the pier. We built some pylons to make the pier at Imperial Beach look like it used to. They didn’t look strong enough to me, but the engineers assured me they were.

But when we were going to shoot, these crazy undercurrents washed all but two of the pylons away. So I just walked out into the middle of the freezing water, in my wetsuit, to think. I knew nobody would follow me in to ask me questions.

I had to quickly think of a new idea to shoot the whole day. I decided we would use the existing pier and add the look we needed in CG. Until then, I thought my whole career was dead and I would be fired on day one. 

4. The #MeToo movement has (in some ways) had a positive effect on my career. Overnight, the TV networks and streamers had massive mandates to hire more women.  I was immediately hired to do two episodes of This Is Us.

Obviously, it did not translate to features hiring that many more women. However, in television, directors don’t get that much power anyway, the showrunners and the writers do. Directors basically just drop in, do your scenes, and take a lot of orders from people. But it’s still better than nothing.

5. First-time moviemakers should take acting classes and take them seriously. That made a huge difference for me. I forced myself to go on stage, do showcases, and put myself in high-pressure situations that were similar to filming on set.

I did not want to be an actor, but it really helped me understand the shit that actors go through, and it helps me protect them and try to make a better space for them on the set. It also taught me that a line can sound nice on paper, but has to be brought to life. 

Catherine Harwicke on Working With Young Actors

6. If your story is about young characters, don’t watch movies about kids or high schoolers. Find a way to learn from real kids. When I was making Thirteen, I didn’t watch any movies like mine for inspiration. Nikki Reed was my 13-year-old writing partner, and when I visited her house, it felt like a war zone.

When I was filming her family, it almost felt like war photography. I watched war movies and I watched Mean Streets, because it was more like action, and I wanted it to feel that kinetic, because that’s the way the girls felt. 

Also Read: Martin McDonagh: Things I've Learned as a Moviemaker

7. Having fun on set creates buy-in with your collaborators. Try to make people laugh during the day and make each person feel important. I’m trying to improve at this because on some of my first movies, I had such tunnel vision. You have to do your job, but you have to keep it fun and entertaining and let people feel good about being there.

You can go to dinner and bond during rehearsals, too.

8. Reading your script with actors creates ideas you wouldn’t find on your own. It’s very fun when you’re workshopping a script and you have actors reading lines. It may be earlier than the rehearsal, or it might be during the rehearsal, but that’s when you start to find little magical things and get some cool ideas.

You can find interesting, new locations for scenes that were written to be somewhere else. It’s to find all of the creative, spontaneous things that add to your movie. When you start seeing new ideas and the magic happens, that’s when moviemaking is super fun.

Mafia Mamma, directed by Catherine Hardwicke, is now in theaters, from Bleecker Street.

Main image: Catherine Hardwicke and Toni Collette on the set of Mafia Mamma.

Since its momentous 2019 release, Tarantino's Once Upon a Time... in Hollywood has done what only great moviemakers' films can: draw crowds, stir conversation, ignite imaginations. It didn't win Oscars for Best Picture or Best Director, as many expected, but it did earn Brad Pitt a Best Supporting Actor win. And it will age magnificently. If he stays true to his vow to make 10 films in all, Tarantino has just one film left on his storied career. Here, Quentin Tarantino offers 10 things he's learned as a moviemaker.

As told to Max Weinstein

1. If you’re a writer-director, you have to invest in the concept of being a writer — not just writing something for yourself to direct. You’ve got to commit to the literature of what you’re doing, rather than worry about that finished movie at the end of the road.

2. Work your drama inside of a social ritual that everyone can understand and appreciate—like, say, sitting at a dinner table. It’s a wonderful way to write dialogue and play with tension. If you’ve done your job as a storyteller, your story is leading to that table. You make an unsaid vow to the audience: “Things might be the way they are when these characters sit down, but by the time they stand up, they’re going be different.” And when the scene is over, now we’re in a different movie.

3. Make your script really detailed. You don’t know if anyone is going to talk to you about it. If you can make the movie on the page and someone can see it in their brain as they read it, well, then they might give you a chance to do it, because they’re not guessing about it.

4. If you’re self-taught, your script is going to be your guide. I didn’t go to film school. It’s tougher to pick up the technical stuff at the beginning of your career if you’re not coming from that background. On my first couple of movies, I wished I better understood lighting, or the difference between this lens versus that lens. But then I thought, “The cinematographer knows more about cinematography than I do… the editor knows more about editing than I do… but I know more about this script than they do.”

5. Character backstory is important for everyone making the movie to know. It informs you and you actors. But it’s not important for the audience. They don’t care.

6. Get the hardest part of your shoot out of the way as soon as possible. It’ll take you forever, but when you finish, you’ll have a sense of confidence—maybe even hubris—from having done that big sequence first. That will carry you through the rest of the movie.

7. How you’ll want to put a scene together reveals itself to you as you watch your dailies. I always take my notes on the line readings and takes that I like, but when I’m watching my dailies I don’t even want to look at any of my notes that say, “On the day, this was my favorite take.” You just want to have it all affect you.

8. After a certain point and time, I learned that you have to follow the sun through your whole shooting day when you’re outdoors. I used to fight Robert Richardson about that: “I wanna do this first!” Now, that’s ridiculous to say to Bob! Bob will say, “Just allow me. The movie’s gonna look f----- great! But you gotta follow the f----- sun!”

9. When you show food inserts, everything has to be lit just perfectly. When I show people eating and drinking, I want you to want to have what they’re having! When you watch Jackie Brown, I want you to get a screwdriver like Ordell’s drinking through the whole movie. I want you to want a piece of strudel with crème fraîche on it, like Landa’s in Inglourious Basterds. In Pulp Fiction, when we show the insert of the burger being picked up, and that close-up of Sam Jackson taking a bite—it’s a good-lookin’ burger! When I show my food inserts, that’s when I become Adrian Lyne.

10. A film crew is a weird combination of circus performers and the military. It’s a bunch of guys and gals on a mission. You’re assigned a task to accomplish, there’s a military breakdown between the officers and the people working for the officers, and then you swarm the beach. You invade locations, take them over, and for the time being, you make everything run your way. Then, you pack up and you’re gone.

Featured image photograph by Andrew Cooper.