main street

“Things that just occur to you aren’t ideas. I’ve read thousands of screenplay pages that are lousy with things that have occurred to people—but don’t have a single idea. And curiously, not even ideas are enough for a film, or a book, or whatever it is that doesn’t yet exist. That script you’re talking about—for now—is in the “occurrences” zone. I stopped just in time, before convincing myself there was something to it. Sometimes the timing of contests, grants, workshops pushes you to look at occurrences in another way. You’ve got to be really patient, avoid the vanity of being productive. The process of questioning the world is not so simple. Variety and difference are important. These are not things you lay hands on by goofing around. I take care not to pollute the planet with my stuff. Each time I hear a production house is looking for content, it makes me shudder. Because of the brazen honesty of it. They want content because there are containers. All this smacks of garbage. I think we’re in an age of producing for no good reason. And soon the age of editing for no good reason will come.”

“Tact, like empathy, is based on a certain form of mutual understanding. But while empathy implies the idea of entering someone else’s mind inasmuch as it is linked to the presumption that ‘I know how you feel’, tact exists to create a form of bonding between individuals that is not based on the idea of intrusion but, conversely, on the respect for existing boundaries, and on a willingness not always to assume that one knows. While empathy requires resonance and proximity, tact is there to restore distance, and to accept the difference between the individuals involved in order to protect and preserve their dignity. Tact is based on an attention towards otherness.”