Quotes from Mike Mills

OK, so my parents were married in 1955 and my mom knew my dad was gay and my dad knew he was gay and so I was, like, 'Why in the heck did you get married?' Like, what was going on? What was that time? It's like this crazy paradox that my whole life is based on, or my family's based on. So I spent a lot of time trying to understand '55.

I've always known that I love directing but I was really aware of it while making 'Beginners.' I am my happiest when I'm on set directing. I am also my kindest. When the actors get in front of the camera, it makes them very vulnerable. I am so in love with them for trying so hard.

I pretty much believe that a film is a film and when an audience watches a film, they finish it.

It's a very sweet and often problematic situation where people feel like they know me and they're concerned for me. It creates these strange little intimate moments.

Making a movie is so hard, you'd better make movies about something you really know about. And even more, it's really good to make movies about things you need to figure out for yourself, so you're driven the whole way through. It's going to make things more crucial for you.

Everyone talks to their dog, and then in your mind the dog talks back. A talking dog can provide the words that a stunted protagonist finds difficult to muster.

Actors are pretending for you, but they're not lying. They are not putting on a guise instead of themselves. They are finding things inside that they have experienced.

I love being a writer-director. I couldn't imagine directing without writing it. You have to write and tell your stories - that's what directing is to me.

The littlest thing can have the strongest connection when you're grieving. Your Proustian, poetic nerve is turned up to ten.

I am intrigued by inanimate objects. They're a piece of history, someone's statement and ideas of life.

The weird thing about grief, for me at least, was when each of my parents died, for a year or two afterwards I was pretty wildly brave - just willing to take life on.

To me, sadness and humor aren't disrelated and humor is the best tool I've had against the sadness in my life.

Shooting a film is like a kismet quest. You have thirty days and you need magic to happen. So that's why I wear suits. I'm praying to the gods, and I'm doing everything I can to respect the powers of the world.

Life is too short for a half-rack.

There is a drunkenness to grief, which is good.

I am definitely writing letters to lots of directors in my mind when I'm making a film. I'm chasing Woody Allen and Godard and Milos Forman and all these people.

There's great sadness and life doesn't work out like you would want, on a lot of levels, but there's no need to feel all alone. This happens to everybody, so there's no self-pity. This is the ride that humans are on, and all of it is essential for our natural part of it.

Life doesn't just happen; it's constructed through the history of power. And that's something I am interested in and so is the art world: a world that's trying to engage socially, with a leftist slant, to work out how we got here.

People ask 'How does doing a film compare to doing an ad?' Well, when you're doing a commercial you don't have to sell tickets. You have a captured audience. Which is actually completely rare and great; it gives you a lot of freedom. When you make a film, you have to do advertisements for the film.

I guess I watch movies to make myself happier a lot.

To me it's like, every time I'm a director, like today, you're the captain of the ship, so you better dress like it. You're the host of the party.

My experience, with both my parents, is that grief has a lot of down, sad things, but I was also really emotionally raw, in the first year after each of them passed. Flowers smelled more intensely, my relationships were hotter, and I was more willing to risk. I was going for it a lot more. I was 'unsober' and I wasn't playing by my rules.

Grief and memory go together. After someone dies, that's what you're left with. And the memories are so slippery yet so rich.

I think I make films to help bolster and feed the part of me that wants to remain in a positive relationship with the world and to engage in it. So hopefully in non-sentimental ways, I'm trying to make something that helps make me happy.