Mike Figgis - Quotes

The world is an infinitely fascinating, tragic and humorous place.
Figgis, Mike.

There's a sadness to the human condition that I think music is good for. It gives a counterpoint to the visual beauty, and adds depth to pictures that they wouldn't have if the music wasn't there.
Figgis, Mike.

You can do really slow movements with it, like zooming in for a minute and a half. The audience isn't aware that the camera has moved, but there's subconscious tension there.
Figgis, Mike.

But I don't feel it's necessary to play music when I'm shooting. I can usually talk actors through the music pretty well.
Figgis, Mike.

But I don't have such a strong desire to need to get away from filmmaking.
Figgis, Mike.

Films take up so much time, and with theatre, you do have to plan a period of time that you can be free.
Figgis, Mike.

Having said that, like most filmmakers I grew up with a real love of American cinema.
Figgis, Mike.

Obviously, I try to make the films work for an audience. That's the main point of making a film, and in retrospect, one can see that certain films, let's say Leaving Las Vegas, demonstrated its own success.
Figgis, Mike.

You make sure that there's a structure that's interesting for them to play on top of, then do temp versions and try it on the film. By the time the players come to the recording session, I've found what works. So I'm not wasting their time.
Figgis, Mike.

I find myself less and less interested in the idea of “world domination” as an artist and more interested in just working.
Figgis, Mike and Daniel Trilling (Interviewer). "Perspectives Mike Figgis: searches for cinematic zest outside the Hollywood and art-house circuits." in: New Statesman. July 16, 2009. (English).

Film-making is now more like writing a novel or like painting than it ever has been. And I’m surprised at how few people have risen to that challenge so far. Film remains a very mainstream form of expression. Most people are still very interested in the basic story cliché – plus a few somewhat precious video artists who work in quite a limited way on gallery-type installations.
Figgis, Mike and Daniel Trilling (Interviewer). Perspectives Mike Figgis: searches for cinematic zest outside the Hollywood and art-house circuits." in: New Statesman. July 16, 2009. (English).

Narrative films aren’t necessarily inferior, but the wider your spectrum of art, the more you realise that the story is not the only thing happening on the screen.
Figgis, Mike and Daniel Trilling (Interviewer). Perspectives Mike Figgis: searches for cinematic zest outside the Hollywood and art-house circuits." in: New Statesman. July 16, 2009. (English).

That’s why Hollywood is in decline. The problem in America is that young independent film-makers who win the audience award at Sundance have already got their eye on the big bucks. We also have to ask ourselves: are we any longer that interested in the American story? Whether it’s “a man’s gotta do what a man’s gotta do”, or a couple of dissatisfied college kids who maybe want to kill everybody else, or some yuppies living in New York, we’ve been overexposed to American ideas.
Figgis, Mike and Daniel Trilling (Interviewer). "Perspectives Mike Figgis: searches for cinematic zest outside the Hollywood and art-house circuits." in: New Statesman. July 16, 2009. (English).

I’m more enthusiastic about films from the third world, which is the large part of the planet where they’re only just starting to have access to the technology.
Figgis, Mike and Daniel Trilling (Interviewer). "Perspectives Mike Figgis: searches for cinematic zest outside the Hollywood and art-house circuits." in: New Statesman. July 16, 2009. (English).

I say to film-makers here in the UK who want to find that vibrancy, “Simple question: what’s a cinema? Is it the Rex or the Odeon, with bad sugar-laden food on sale in the lobby, a place you don’t really want to hang out in for long afterwards? Or is it a club, an interesting space you’ve converted to show films?” All you need now is a half-decent projector, a couple of decent Bose speakers and whatever you want for your source. It can be a Quicktime film. It can be a tape, or a DVD, depending on how high your quality needs to be. Or it can come off your hard disk. So, what’s a cinema? And do you have to own it?
Figgis, Mike and Daniel Trilling (Interviewer). "Perspectives Mike Figgis: searches for cinematic zest outside the Hollywood and art-house circuits." in: New Statesman. July 16, 2009. (English).

I was always interested in photography, so to find a proper photo gallery, somewhere that's dedicated to photography... I'd say it's very important to me.
Silberman, Lucy. "Mike Figgis's International Downtown Exhibition." in: Interview Magazine. January 21, 2009. (English).

As for digital technology, it started to make itself known, in terms of the quality suddenly starting to improve and improve - it was a huge liberation for me. It was the first time I was really interested in using color, because I could control it myself.
Silberman, Lucy. "Mike Figgis's International Downtown Exhibition." in: Interview Magazine. January 21, 2009. (English).

I never had the space or time to do a proper dark room application, so I was constantly dependent on experts, printers and technicians. And being a bit of a control freak, (another way to say that would be someone who's interested in the process), I was delighted to start to have to think about it myself. In a way this show is the kind of logical expression of the technology. It's like, you know you can do that so why not do it?
Silberman, Lucy. "Mike Figgis's International Downtown Exhibition." in: Interview Magazine. January 21, 2009. (English).

It's difficult working with very rich actors, because inevitably they become a little spoilt, and the managers and agents tend to control things more than is healthy.
Figgis, Mike and Jessica Martin (Interviewer). "Chat with Mike Figgis." in: BBC. 2009. (English).

It's difficult to talk about films in retrospect. What's interesting is the period of time when you are actually making the film, and trying new things.
Figgis, Mike and Jessica Martin (Interviewer). "Chat with Mike Figgis." in: BBC. 2009. (English).

So in talking about it afterwards, I find I have to resist the temptation to overendow certain ideas.
Figgis, Mike and Jessica Martin (Interviewer). "Chat with Mike Figgis." in: BBC. 2009. (English).

But I also want to resist the temptation to place too much emphasis on technical elements of the process. At the end of the day...
Figgis, Mike and Jessica Martin (Interviewer). "Chat with Mike Figgis." in: BBC. 2009. (English).

This ability to raise your game is something that I'm very interested in with actors.
Figgis, Mike and Jessica Martin (Interviewer). "Chat with Mike Figgis." in: BBC. 2009. (English).

Hollywood studios are cautiously intrigued and deeply worried by the phenomenon of digital filmmaking, and I think Sony were keen to be seen associating, albeit very cheaply, with some kind of digital filmmaking.
Figgis, Mike and Jessica Martin (Interviewer). "Chat with Mike Figgis." in: BBC. 2009. (English).

The power of sound to put an audience in a certain psychological state is vastly undervalued. And the more you know about music and harmony, the more you can do with that.
Figgis, Mike and Jessica Martin (Interviewer). "Chat with Mike Figgis." in: BBC. 2009. (English).

I play music. I play piano and trumpet. I studied classical guitar. Sometimes it's nice to play somebody else's music. Other times it's nice to improvise.
Figgis, Mike and Jessica Martin (Interviewer). "Chat with Mike Figgis." in: BBC. 2009. (English).

I think this was a significant moment where control began to slip away from the creative elements of the filmmaking teams, and into the hands of executives and the money.
Figgis, Mike and Jessica Martin (Interviewer). "Chat with Mike Figgis." in: BBC. 2009. (English).

One of the problems of this technology is that the designers tend to have scant knowledge of practical filmmaking, and new designs are usually dropped and replaced by something entirely new, rather ... than the idea of creating a prototype and then developing it into an efficient tool - as has been the system with 35mm and 16mm cameras.
Figgis, Mike and Jessica Martin (Interviewer). "Chat with Mike Figgis." in: BBC. 2009. (English).

You can never presume to understand the secrets of a marriage. Once that door closes, you don't know what really goes on.
Figgis, Mike and Alex Simon (Interviewer). "The Hollywood Interview." in: The Hollywood Interview. February 13, 2008. (English).

I grew up in Africa, then moved back to a very working class area of England, where I promptly got the shit kicked out of me for the first two or three months until I learned how to "become one of the lads," though never really. So I always made a habit of watching people and observing them and noticing those moments that give them away. It's all about what's behind the façade.
Figgis, Mike and Alex Simon (Interviewer). "The Hollywood Interview." in: The Hollywood Interview. February 13, 2008. (English).

I get very nervous when I have to deal with real people, especially real people who were well-documented, filmed and videoed. People who were so much a part of the 20th century art scene, that everyone knows what they looked like, unlike Beethoven, Wagner, or even Robert Johnson because there's only something like four photographs of him. When you're talking about someone like Chet, you're always going to have a problem with a music, because no actor's ever going to be that good. Although I haven't seen Hilary and Jackie. I heard Emily Watson looked very convincing. But the best thing you can say about a musician...the best thing about Chet, or Miles Davis, or Louis Armstrong was watching them play. So I don't really know what would warrant making a film about these people once they're gone.
Figgis, Mike and Alex Simon (Interviewer). "The Hollywood Interview." in: The Hollywood Interview. February 13, 2008. (English).

I really got off on film sound. Then I had my theater group, and I used to use a lot of tape and pre-record dialogue to make it sound like a cinema, like movie dialogue, to use it like a sort of thought process so the audience would be sitting in this sort of soundscape. I think Polanski's Repulsion (1965) was the first film that made me aware of how sound could be used in film. There's a little music in that, but not a lot. The sound of the dripping tap, the sound of the flies building up, then the way he used sound in the really frightening scenes was absolutely awesome. You'd hear the flies, but then you'd also hear the traffic outside. So it was very realistic. I hate dubbed sound. I hate manufactured sound. I like real sound. And it's so much more effective.
Figgis, Mike and Alex Simon (Interviewer). "The Hollywood Interview." in: The Hollywood Interview. February 13, 2008. (English).

Make a list of obvious technical points and refer to it all the time. Because once you start directing there are too many reasons for you to be distracted.
Figgis, Mike and Alex Simon (Interviewer). "The Hollywood Interview." in: The Hollywood Interview. February 13, 2008. (English).

Every time I seem to make the same stupid mistakes and I'm like 'Fuck! I told myself I wasn't going to do this again!'
Figgis, Mike and Alex Simon (Interviewer). "The Hollywood Interview." in: The Hollywood Interview. February 13, 2008. (English).

I always use the analogy of fishing. You catch an idea, and even if it´s just a tiny fish of an idea, a fragment, if you focus on it and desire more they´ll swim in to you over time.
Figgis, Mike. "Into the Abstract: Interview with David Lynch." in: Sight and Sound. March 2007, p. 18-19. (English).

My whole process begins when somewhere along the line I catch an idea. That idea is everything to me then. You catch a film idea and you fall in love with it for two reasons. One is the idea itself and the second is how cinema can translate it. And then you just stay true to that idea and go. It keeps talking to you, and you don´t walk away from anything until it feels correct based on that idea. That´s it.
Figgis, Mike. "Into the Abstract: Interview with David Lynch." in: Sight and Sound. March 2007, p. 18-19. (English).

All that catching of ideas and waiting has already occurred. But if you read that script, it´s just like getting ideas again. It all comes alive in your mind ad you see it. So you stay true to that. The script to me is like the blueprint, it´s not the finished house.
Figgis, Mike. "Into the Abstract: Interview with David Lynch." in: Sight and Sound. March 2007, p. 18-19. (English).

The idea is that it´s not finished until it´s finished: when the whole feels correct, you say it´s done. Like with a painting. Do you approach painting in the same way?
Figgis, Mike. "Into the Abstract: Interview with David Lynch." in: Sight and Sound. March 2007, p. 18-19. (English).

Painting is different because there´s no script. So if you´ve got a bunch of canvases ready to go, some paint and a place to work, all you need is to catch an idea to get you started. Then it´s action and reaction: the paint starts talking to you, the beautiful process begins and a whole bunch of different things happen. More often than not there´s a point in the action and reaction where the reaction is to destroy the thing: it´s pretty much bullshit surface baloney, and you just want to destroy it to get past it. The destruction is much more free, so you might just start building on the thing that was destroyed, another thing comes out and that´s the way it can grow. You can break through to something else, but if you´re not up for destroying you can´t get there.
Figgis, Mike. "Into the Abstract: Interview with David Lynch." in: Sight and Sound. March 2007, p. 18-19. (English).

I always say I like bad quality, though I don´t know exactly what I mean by that.
Figgis, Mike. "Into the Abstract: Interview with David Lynch." in: Sight and Sound. March 2007, p. 18-19. (English).

As you know, if you´ve got the camera then you´re going to do something you wouldn´t do if you´re back here behind two people and you don´t have the hands on.
Figgis, Mike. "Into the Abstract: Interview with David Lynch." in: Sight and Sound. March 2007, p. 18-19. (English).

Film is beautiful, but having had this experience I would die if I had to go that slow ever again. It´s not slow in a good way. It´s death, death, death. I can hardly stand even thinking about it.
Figgis, Mike. "Into the Abstract: Interview with David Lynch." in: Sight and Sound. March 2007, p. 18-19. (English).

I find that really distressing. In America they eat and go for a piss and talk the whole time, and it's got something to do with the fact that there's no interaction between them and the screen any more.
Figgis, Mike and Richard Williams. "Once Upon A Time code." in: Guardian. August 11, 2000. (English).

When you get into cinema you can become fascinated by how dark you can go and still see something. That’s a purely aesthetic choice, how something looks, which then emotionally colors the way people read a film.
Figgis, Mike and Richard Williams. "Once Upon A Time code." in: Guardian. August 11, 2000. (English).

The late 20th century has produced a question that nobody in the 18th or 19th century would have doubted. Every great painting, every great novel, every piece of music by Beethoven or Wagner, they were tragic, dark, ponderous works about the soul. The news hasn’t gotten any lighter today. So I find it odd that more filmmakers don’t actually deal with the truth.
Figgis, Mike and Bette Gordon (Interviewer). "Mike Figgis." in: Bomb Magazine. Issue 54, Winter 1996.

It’s not a proper conspiracy—conspiracies very rarely are; they’re never that clever. It’s a pervading feeling, if you like.
Figgis, Mike and Bette Gordon (Interviewer). "Mike Figgis." in: Bomb Magazine. Issue 54, Winter 1996.

The key issue is that they mustn’t have a say in the end result of the film, they merely must buy it and sell it. Like carpets. That’s the end of the equation. I do not give a flying fuck about what they think of the content. Nor do I ever, ever want to be in a room with 25 yuppies telling me what tragedy is…
Figgis, Mike and Bette Gordon (Interviewer). "Mike Figgis." in: Bomb Magazine. Issue 54, Winter 1996.

The deal is, with HBO you get paid basically no money, but they let you be “creative.” So everybody does it for nothing, Juliette Binoche and Scott Glenn come in for nothing. I did the script, the score, and directed it. And they wept, said it was lovely, flew me to New York a couple of times on the Concorde…
Figgis, Mike and Bette Gordon (Interviewer). "Mike Figgis." in: Bomb Magazine. Issue 54, Winter 1996.

Leaving Las Vegas is tragic. But in this case, two things add another level to the tragedy: humor, and the unapologetic way you approach alcoholism. There’s this bleak view of a man at the end of his rope, an alcoholic, but it’s also humorous and very matter-of-fact. Not overly emotional.
Figgis, Mike and Bette Gordon (Interviewer). "Mike Figgis." in: Bomb Magazine. Issue 54, Winter 1996.

The fact that it has to be about alcoholism or drug addiction or prostitution in order to get to the point now is a little sad. Philosophically, 19th century literature and Existentialism are full of stories of these kinds of people, and it’s about acceptance, a very pure, almost religious overtone. If it was about a man suffering from terminal cancer it would be the same. This is a man suffering from terminal alcoholism. It’s an illness. Going back to the darkness we were talking about, the studio people can’t accept that. What it reflects is a kind of real, dark terror within themselves of dying. They say that filmmaking should be a celebration of life; I think their reaction is a celebration of cowardice.
Figgis, Mike and Bette Gordon (Interviewer). "Mike Figgis." in: Bomb Magazine. Issue 54, Winter 1996.