Quotes from Riley Stearns

To think that there's one version of a man is ridiculous.

The script for 'The Art of Self-Defense,' to be fair, I knew going into it that it was going to be a hard movie to get made.

I play bass, and I wanted to be a musician.

I would say the biggest challenge on any film is always time.

It would be crazy to write a movie - which, I've seen these movies before - where someone is a beginner, has their training montage, and all of a sudden, they're an expert.

When everyone decides that they have to be a certain way, that there's one way to be a man and one way to be a woman, that's when we go down the wrong path.

I lost ten pounds while shooting 'Faults' somehow and by the end of the shoot people were basically handing me stuff to eat in between takes.

I've always been fascinated by cults even as a kid.

I'll admit I'm still getting used to using preferred pronouns here and there. Actually changing the way that you address people can be a challenge. It's not from a place of not understanding, but conditioning.

Tattoos are traditionally super masculine, but I just like it. I like the art.

I was really interested in doing a martial arts movie, but maybe exploring ideas that maybe you wouldn't think to explore in a martial arts movie.

Sometimes I wonder how my filmmaking would have been affected by film school but in the end I'm glad I got to figure it out on my own.

As long as you're a good person and you're doing things that don't hurt other people, whoever you are, just embrace that.

'Faults,' in a lot of ways, is still is a heightened film, but the end of the day, it's the real world. It's in '86, is the arbitrary date that I've set. And so I went about it in a more realistic way.

I really like films that don't let the score influence the tone too much.

I went to UT in Austin for a year as an undeclared liberal arts student. After that year I applied to the film program but didn't get in so I dropped out and moved out to L.A.

I always wanted to learn French or Italian growing up. I love the romantic sound of those languages.

I do like to have a clean slate, especially when you're in indie film.

I was questioning what it means to be a man. I didn't feel as masculine as I thought I should. I was out of shape, slightly depressed, inactive, and didn't feel like I belonged to something. I started thinking about what the definition of a man is, and realized they're all these archaic tropes.

I think it's so cool that the younger generation is so much more fluid in this regard. You don't have to be a certain type of person if you're a man, or just because you're a man, or vice versa for a woman.

I'm definitely not making movies solely for myself. That's something that I hear people say in the past, all they care about is that they like what they're making. They don't care what other people think. I think that's a disservice to the project and to the people that are working on it.

I go back home for Christmas every year. Inevitably, somebody from my family will say, 'How's the karate going?' I've told them a million times I do jiu-jitsu, but it's always, 'This is Riley. He does karate.' They're very different art forms!

It just makes me laugh, when you talk to people who are 'typical' men, masculine, they watch sports and they can armchair quarterback, but they don't do anything themselves and they judge your masculinity.

Specifically for 'Faults,' the three films I mention most as inspiration are 'Dogtooth,' 'Fargo' and 'Punch-Drunk Love.'