Its fascinating to watch a show develop from a script to a 22-minute c — Joseph Gordon-Levitt

"Actors didnt use to be celebrities. A hundred years ago, they put the theaters next to the brothels. Actors were poor. Celebrities used to be kings and queens. Then the United States abolished monarchy, and now theres this coming together of show business and celebrity. I dont think its healthy. I dont want to sound self-important, but all these celebrity shows and magazines—it comes from us, from Hollywood, from our country. Were the ones creating it. And I think it works in close step with a lot of other bad things that are happening in the world. It promotes greed, it promotes being selfish and it promotes this ladder, where youre a better person if you have more money. Its not at all about the work itself. Dont get me wrong. I love movies. But this myth of celebrity has nothing to do with movies."

"Most scripts are bad. I read a lot of them. Brick was a good script just to read. It was like, “Oh my God, these words feel so good in my mouth.” A lot of movies try to set up a world with cool sets, costumes, camera work. In Brick, the world is born from the words."

"To me, a sex scene in a movie generally means a gratuitous scene that doesnt serve the story but gives a kind of excuse—weve got these two actors, we want to see them naked, so lets bring in the music and the soft light. In Mysterious Skin, none of the sex scenes are like that. They all are about the process that this character is going through—and he grows from each of those scenes. You couldnt have told the story any other way. Theres nothing to be embarrassed about. I would be embarrassed if I was like, "Shit, everybody wants to look at my ass."

"Supermarket tabloids and celebrity gossip shows are not just innocently shallow entertainment, but a fundamental part of a much larger movement that involves apathy, greed and hierarchy. Celebrity doesn’t have anything to do with art or craft. It’s about being rich and thinking that you’re better than everybody else."

"My dad never blew anything up, but he probably had friends who did. He and my mom have always preached that the pen is mightier than a Molotov cocktail."

"The cinematographer came up to me and said, You have to hit your mark exactly,"