Paul Gross and Canadian Cinema

In honor of tonight’s, Tuesday, March 15^th, Innis College screening of Hyena Road with Paul Gross in attendance for a question period, here are some good Paul Gross quotes, which are particularly interesting for young independent Toronto directors. – D.D.

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 “My advice is shoot, shoot. Make movies. You know, you have the luxury of having equipment that you have access to that can allow you to make things, in the way that we didn’t when I was coming in because we actually had to have film still. But I think the most important thing is just keep doing it. When you’re leaving school, you get yourself involved in productions. If you really want to get involved get into film, movies and television, you just go and get onto shows. Shows that are shooting out of Toronto, Montreal, Newfoundland. Get in and around those kind of things, to start to really understand what the operations of what a set is like, and at the same time you write your own shows, you direct your own shows. Make them shorts. Once you start to feel comfortable making a complete narrative inside a short, then you start expanding that out. Make movies!”

   
"What does start to happen is that you go to other people for money, like you go to Telefilm, the federal funding agency. And they always have a lot of opinions about your script, many of which are completely idiotic, but you have to sort of bear with them somehow. Once in a while you pick through there and there's a couple of notions - and you say, oh that's pretty smart - but most of it is nonsense."

“The really important thing for directors is that you got to know how to delegate. You can’t know all of this stuff. Know what you’re strong at. I’m not… I mean I kinda vaguely know what cameras do, and I roughly know what lenses do. And I more or less know what stock is. But I would never pretend to say that I want it on… such and such a lens at eight feet… I can describe what I want the effect to be. And those guys can achieve it. And the same goes for costume, with design. And what I understand better are performers. But other people come in and who don’t really know or understand performers, since they come from editing. Or they’re Ridley Scott and they come from… wherever here does… The factory of invention.”

“And I think that you have to be in love with the performers. The director needs to… Some advice to a director would be to do not dislike your cast. You must love them. You must decide that you love them. Because they’re everything for you…”