"It’s always this grand search in the industry to find good material. Whenever there is good material they all jump on it and it’s like a food fight to get it made. That’s why so many things take years and years to develop because it all shows up on screen. If there are holes in the story structure, if it’s not a compelling, moving narrative, that shows on screen and the movie fails."

http://the-talks.com/interviews/leonardo-dicaprio/

Leonardo DiCaprio

"It’s becoming something much more commercial – the one changing factor is the money. So when you have money the system will be more like magazines. To make more money, you need to make more content because you have to have people come back to your blog. And to make more content means you lose your focus; you talk about more things and you edit less."

http://the-talks.com/interviews/garance-dore/

Garance Doré

"At one moment I thought that if I didn’t do a picture in a certain way then it wasn’t a Mario Testino Picture. And I’ve realized that Mario Testino is everything, Mario Testino is whatever he feels like being, because it always ends up looking like me, whatever I do. If it’s quiet, if it’s loud, if it’s bright, if it’s dark, if it’s in or out, it always ends up being Mario Testino."

http://the-talks.com/interviews/mario-testino/

Mario Testino

"Human life is magic – in all its tragedies and all its glory; it’s really magic that we exist here at all. If you think about what it takes to create a life it’s just insane."

http://the-talks.com/interviews/colin-farrell/

Colin Farrell

"If I could be 18, now, it would be great! With the sum total of what I’ve taken on board, it would be fantastic to be a young woman of 18. Maybe, I don’t know. Or maybe not?"

http://the-talks.com/interviews/charlotte-rampling/

Charlotte Rampling

"I’ve always liked to be a meat and potatoes kind of actor who doesn’t believe in any of the highfalutin stuff about acting, so I tend to be a little bit more cynical. But I guess it is a creative process; acting is a creative process, and directing and music. I think creative people – and I take myself as a creative person and it doesn’t mean you have to be an actor, a musician, or a painter – but I think if you are in a creative profession or a creative business you do have a heightened awareness."

http://the-talks.com/interviews/sir-anthony-hopkins/

Anthony Hopkins

"I was in junior high school with a girl who had five brothers, and they were all fucking her so her father probably was too. Everybody knew it, but this was never discussed. You never heard about these things going on. So when I started making work, I said, 'Why can’t you show everything?'"

http://the-talks.com/interviews/larry-clark/

Larry Clark

"The worst thing you can lust after is popularity. The worst thing in the world is to want to be popular. I can’t give you a recipe for success, but I can give you a recipe for failure: try to please everybody."

http://the-talks.com/interviews/frank-langella/

Frank Langella

"In my naïve kind of way I thought that artists had the right to drink and use drugs and to experiment and to lead a life that embraces that kind of experience. Because reading wasn’t enough for me, I wanted to experience things. I wanted to know what van Gogh felt when he cut his ear off. I wanted to know what those things, those intense kind of extremes were like."

http://the-talks.com/interviews/dennis-hopper/

Dennis Hopper

"Before football games instead of sitting through the preparation and motivation I’d go sleep in the room that had the tackling dummies and wake up and be ready to go and fine."

http://the-talks.com/interviews/john-malkovich/

John Malkovich

"I have zero desire – never had and never will have – for the public to know who I am. They are going to perceive who you are anyway. They do it anyway, they make up who you are anyway, so let them go. There’s almost something masturbatory about it. It’s like, 'You go masturbate, but I don’t want to see it!'"

http://the-talks.com/interviews/robin-wright/

Robin Wright

"Art is freedom and you can do it any way you want. I can take a bottle and put it on top of this table and say this is art. If I believe it, it’s art for me, and it can be art for other people."

http://the-talks.com/interviews/mr-brainwash/

Mr. Brainwash

"It doesn’t make me nervous that we’ll become extinct, it doesn’t frighten me at all. There is a wonderful thing that Martin Luther the reformer said when he was asked, “What would you do if the world would disappear tomorrow in the apocalypse?” And Luther said, 'Today, I would plant an apple tree.'"

http://the-talks.com/interviews/werner-herzog/

Werner Herzog

“I’m trying to not play it safe. I learn more when I fail than when I succeed, so if I push myself to do something that’s really difficult, I could fail and I’ll learn a lot. I’ll be awful, but I’ll still learn a lot from it. But if I don’t fail, then I’ll be in a great movie.”

http://the-talks.com/interviews/jessica-chastain/

Jessica Chastain - I’m trying to not play it safe

“Actors are notoriously bad dressers. Between roles they don’t know how to put themselves together anymore. If you have just taken off a Victorian frock and you are about to go into the 1950s, you kind of spend most of the rest of the time in t-shirts and pajamas.”

http://the-talks.com/interviews/colin-firth/

Colin Firth - Actors are bad dressers

“I believe imagination is more important than knowledge. Stephen Crane wrote The Great American War Novel and he was never anywhere near a battlefield. To write about a gangster, or anything, you start not with the gangster, but with the person.”

Read the full interview here: http://the-talks.com/interviews/dennis-lehane/

Dennis Lehane - imagination is more important than knowledge

“I used to protest war in general as a concept, specific wars, future wars, past wars, and I never felt comfortable with it so all my political activity is relegated to writing humor about political stuff. My first play was a kind of satire on young liberals. That is the way I express myself politically because I always felt uncomfortable carrying a sign because you have to hold your hand up all day and the wood can splinter… So I really don’t like protests.”

Read the full interview here: http://the-talks.com/interviews/jesse-eisenberg/

Jesse Eisenberg - I really don’t like protests

Robert Wilson: "So much of the theater that we have now reminds me of television: most directors, most actors say something for the people to understand. They say this, and you’re supposed to understand what it is that you’re saying and what you’re doing. It’s okay to get lost! When I did Einstein, there was nothing for the audience to hang on to."

Read the full story: http://the-talks.com/interviews/robert-wilson/

Robert Wilson on understanding theater

Fashion designer Rick Owens: "I always introduce her as my better half because I think that’s such a great way of putting it. It’s like, I don’t really know where one of us ends and the other begins. It’s more profound than a business partner. We would be having a beautifully aesthetic life whether this was successful or not, it’s just that we’ve made it public and sold it and so people recognize it. But it would have been great anyway."

Read the full story: http://the-talks.com/interviews/rick-owens/

Rick Owens on his relationship with Michele Lamy

Dries Van Noten: "We don’t make couture; we make prêt-à-porter. And I’m very strict with that. For me, if you want to make dreams, make haute couture and show it without pretending that you’re doing something that people can find afterwards even though you don’t sell it. For me, that’s not right. I really want to show reality, not some kind of theory, like, “This is the way that fashion could look like, but you’ll never be able to get it.” For me, it’s a reality that I want to show. Okay, maybe a beautiful reality, maybe a reality shown with girls who are all 180 centimeters and boys who are 188 centimeters tall, but still it’s a reality." 

Read the full story: http://the-talks.com/interviews/dries-van-noten/

Designer Dries Van Noten on couture vs. prêt-à-porter

Tavi Gevinson: "it’s motivating. But fear is something that holds me back a lot. The pendulum just kind of swings side to side so after I have periods of depression where I do hit rock bottom and feel extremely fearful, then I just know how horrible it is and eventually feel bored enough of the feeling that I feel extra motivated. And then it’s more like the fear of missing out on something totally outweighs the fear of what could happen if I take a risk. Fear is a motivator for me in that it makes me so sad to imagine looking back and just wishing that I’d gone for something more or trusted myself."

Read the full story: http://the-talks.com/interviews/tavi-gevinson/

Tavi Gevinson on fear as a motivator

Jeff Bridges: "Marriage is a wonderful idea. To have a person that you spend that much time with, that you can get intimate with. Intimacy seems to be one of the major highs of life, whether it’s getting to know yourself in a deeper way, or your partner, or the world and the society that you live in. Give space to this tightness that we find ourselves in."

Read the full story: http://the-talks.com/interviews/jeff-bridges/

Jeff Bridges on intimacy, love and marriage

Catherine Deneuve: "I don’t want to only do what I know how to do. I want to be pushed somewhere else. I need a director because I think actors need to be directed. Of course I could direct myself, but I would do things that I’ve already done, you know? And that’s the danger at a certain time for an actor, to do things in an easy way, to always choose the same style of characters."

Read the full story: http://the-talks.com/interviews/catherine-deneuve/

Catherine Deneuve: "I want to be pushed somewhere else"

Christo of Christo and Jeanne-Claude: "If you go through all of our images, they are all unique images. We never built another gate, we never built more umbrellas, we never wrapped another parliament, we never built another Running Fence. They are unique things, they are their own physicalities. This is what we enjoyed most because they are adventurous and not boring. "

Read the full story: http://the-talks.com/interviews/christo/

Christo on the importance of uniqueness

Al Pacino: "You want to keep yourself open. You don’t want to close off because vulnerability is important. You can’t let your skin get too thick. Like Brecht says in that great play he wrote, at a young age, too. At 22 he wrote In the Jungle of Cities and one of the characters says, “Man’s skin is too thin for this world.” So, he sees that it grows thicker and thicker, until finally he is bumping into things and not feeling them anymore."

Read the full story: http://the-talks.com/interviews/al-pacino/

Al Pacino: "Keep yourself open"

Robert Pattinson: "The landscape has changed so much. I remember even people like Colin Farrell and stuff. I guess when he was super wild, that was only seven years ago, eight years ago, but I don’t even think you’re allowed to be like that anymore. If you do that now, you just don’t get employed. At all. Everyone wants you to be so vanilla! It’s so lame! So, everyone’s just like secret drug addicts instead!"

Read the full story: http://the-talks.com/interviews/robert-pattinson/

Robert Pattinson: "Everyone wants you to be so vanilla"

Adam Selman: "I let that define me and then I just sort of absorbed everything. I found out about disco and Giorgio Moroder, I loved Divine and John Waters. I soaked it all up. It was an education. "

Read the full story: http://the-talks.com/interview/adam-selman

Adam Selman on disco, New York and Giorgio Moroder

Tom Sachs: "There are many thousands of artists; very few of them are recognized publicly, and even fewer of them are consecrated by prosperity. The value and virtue of art is 99.9% in the making. The exhibition, the buying and selling of it, all of that commerce is a different world, and it’s a world that I’m lucky enough to be able to participate in but it’s not the priority."

Read the full story: http://the-talks.com/interview/tom-sachs/

Tom Sachs on the value and virtue of art

Todd Haynes: "I think I've been drawn to characters who have to confront isolation, who have to confront obstacles or barriers, who are being sort of excluded from their societies in various ways, yeah. And yet sometimes that isolation is completely in the comfortable bosom of middle class life, where you don't expect to find isolation."

http://the-talks.com/interview/todd-haynes/

Director Todd Haynes on creating characters that confront isolation

Russell Crowe: "I have a moral standard of my own. I know the difference between right and wrong, I know what I feel comfortable with. And if you live up to your own moral standard, you're going to have a more comfortable life. If you try and live up to somebody else's and live on behalf of somebody else, that's the place that I'm not comfortable with as a person."

http://the-talks.com/interview/russell-crowe/

Russell Crowe: "I have a moral standard of my own."

Eric Roth: "I'm very proud of the writing I did on Benjamin Button, for example. First of all, it was very emotional to me because both of my parents died in a period of time while I was writing it - so it meant something to me personally. Fincher gave me the permission, in a nice way, to just write some sort of short stories in the main story so that it had its own kind of unique quality to it that I think you won't find in most screenplays. Most of the things I write, and this is without any arrogance, I enjoy a lot of things in them."

http://the-talks.com/interview/eric-roth/

Screenwriter Eric Roth on his personal connection to Benjamin Button

Allen Jones: "It's a continuum. I don't see it as thinking, "Now I've got to do something new." Every now and again, of course, a line of inquiry comes to an end, and then you're in sort of a fallow period while you're getting over what you've been doing so far. But usually, the spark comes from an unexpected source. I do think this: one of your most fertile moments is when in fact you're technically off duty."

http://the-talks.com/interview/allen-jones/

Artist Allen Jones on the creative process

Steve Buscemi: "I think the more you trust your director, the more you're willing to put yourself out there and take more risks and not be afraid."

http://the-talks.com/interview/steve-buscemi/

Steve Buscemi on the relationship between actor and director

Nick Knight: "I use it as a way of following my desires. I'm interested in lots of things and photography has allowed me to walk up to anybody and say, "Hi, can I take your photograph?" and therefore, "Can I become part of your life," or "Can you become part of my life?"

http://the-talks.com/interview/nick-knight/

Photographer Nick Knight on photography and desire

Judi Dench: "There is nothing interesting about getting older, it's horrible. In fact, I might start going back the other way."

http://the-talks.com/interview/judi-dench/

Dame Judi Dench on the downsides of ageing

Pat Steir: "That's my business, the way colours interact when they're on a canvass together or when they're out the window together or when they're on your dress together. Color affects me."

http://the-talks.com/interview/pat-steir/

Artist Pat Steir on colour

Nicola Formichetti: "I had a moment of craziness for a bit! But then I started thinking more clearly, and I realized that at the same time, I'm still getting lots of positive reactions. So I started meeting my fans and followers. That was beautiful."

http://the-talks.com/interview/nicola-formichetti/

Nicola Formichetti: "I had a moment of craziness for a bit!"

Ana Ros: "When you are so tired that you look at yourself in the mirror and you say, "Why on earth am I doing that?" You know, running a restaurant like this, without investors, without partners - to fight this game alone is actually every day a struggle. Sometimes you are not in the best shape. And sometimes, you cannot afford to have enough people to do the work, and your effort is doubled or tripled. The biggest thing is that you must find in it a personal happiness."

http://the-talks.com/interview/ana-ros/

Chef Ana Ros on determination and perseverance

“I’ve never felt pressure, I don’t know if that’s ignorance or not. I just feel like, if you want to write me a check to make a movie, thank you so much, but that’s your fault.” - Will Ferrell

http://the-talks.com/interviews/will-ferrell/

Will Ferrell

“There’s no way, really in the end, to be happy unless you get very lucky.” - Woody Allen

http://the-talks.com/interviews/woody-allen/

Woody Allen

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