Gus Van Sant

I'm usually trying to react to what the actors are coming up with. And then the environment, and then the story.

The area of teenage life is not necessarily rarefied; we've all gone through that period. It's not as rarefied as a western or a space adventure or a gangster film, but it has its own dynamic.

I think over the course of 14 films, I'm returning to a place that I know to tell a story... the same way Spielberg returned to fantasy, Lucas returned to the 'Star Wars' saga, or John Ford returned to the western.

If you put up posters around town for high-school kids, high-school kids will come. If you're casting politicians, you can't put up posters and have politicians come down.

The reason I know about 'Tomb Raider' is from when I was researching 'Elephant.' It was 1999, and I was trying to research the Columbine-massacre kids, and they had played video games, and I, at the time, had never really seen one. It was a world I didn't know.

I have my ideas of what a good documentary is, but drama is a different animal because you're arranging everything.

I find it interesting, the different rules that apply to journalism and drama, even though journalism has become more and more about entertainment, and entertainment has become more and more about journalism.

I've always been interested in how to present something that relates to our reality - which is not really... I don't even know if documentary itself does as good a job. It has its own problems in trying to get at the reality of the situation.

There are all kinds of ways that people present their films, but that's kind of a good feeling, if you can make it seem like the characters are really there.

I think that in some cases, I've made films that have a sentimental quality, at least as part of the film.

I mean, I think I'm pretty sentimental.

I'd come into filmmaking as a painter so, for me, making 'Good Will Hunting' was experimental because I didn't know how to do it.