Quotes from Todd Haynes

You can be a smarty-pants director, but that won't matter if the movie doesn't work emotionally as well as intellectually.

Pop music can get inside us and enter our memory bubbles. It provides those true Proustian moments, unlocking sensations, unlocking our imaginations. Music inspired me as a filmmaker.

When you're shooting concert scenes in films, we try to bring in, where appropriate, as much of a sense of live performance as possible.

A lot of actors just don't seem grown up no matter how old they get... just juveniles with grey hair.

I think it remains a film-by-film process, and since I am relatively selective and slow, it can take a while.

I don't think there's any more synesthetic medium than film.

There's no better place to do a longform project than HBO. I loved the creative teams I got a chance to work with.

I made little Super 8 extravaganzas when I was a kid, the first being my own version of 'Romeo and Juliet,' and where I played all the parts except for Juliet.

After 'Superstar,' I was encouraged. I felt audiences wanted to be challenged.

Every actor prepares differently and to different degrees of privacy. Some want to talk everything out. Others really don't want to talk anything out - or rehearse much.

I like to rehearse before blocking.

I think many of the ideas that opened up in the '60s got implemented in the '70s and that certain minority voices that were not being heard in the '60s, like women and gay people, were being heard in the '70s. Black Civil Rights had also found its foothold, and those ideas were also very pertinent.