Quotes from Jeff Nichols

I can talk to execs very clearly, very plainly. I don't get nervous in front of them anymore.

Whenever I write, I try and approach my stories from some kind of universal theme or idea or emotion.

My characters are not thinking about the act breaks. They're thinking about what they need to do to move forward. As long as I focus on that, the story starts to progress. As soon as I think, 'We're 20 pages in, something better blow up,' we're in trouble.

Most film productions, when they're based at a place, they get, like, a 30-mile radius or a 30-minute radius to get out of the town. And once you go past that, your day starts to become shorter, and you have to start paying your drivers more, and everybody just gets paid more, and you have less time to shoot, and everything costs more.

'Mud' was a depository for a little more nostalgia and just a different kind of feeling, a different kind of mood. Something that's not so dark. Something that does actually have a happy ending and is a little more hopeful.

I'm a director because I directed a movie. And if I have any advice for people, it's, 'Go write something; go direct it. If that's what you have a desire to do, go do it. If the movie stinks, just put it on the shelf and try to do it again.'

As a storyteller, you have to have something to say. You have to look at the world, think about it in relationship to yourself, and say, 'I think this is a pattern,' or 'I think this is the way fatherhood works,' or 'I think this is the way first love feels.' The danger in that is, that's when you open yourself up to real critique.

I'll be honest: 'Badlands' changed my life: it really did rewire my brain as to how film can operate.

There's a rhythm and a cadence in a scene, and when an actor understands without any real direction from you, then that's a very valuable gift. And some people get it, and some people don't.

A lot of people have a belief system that is strictly based on religious dogma.

It takes people being alone in front of the computer at three in the morning to write opinions about movies, apparently.

My first job in the film business was working as a production assistant, and then a production manager on a documentary about Townes Van Zandt.

Making movies is really hard. It's a very complex process, with many, many variables.

There are great advantages of making things on the independent market. There's freedom and control there, and kind of a cleanness to the process that I like.

I think I could probably make $5 to $10m movies for a very long time and live a perfectly good life doing it. I'd probably get paid as well as a surgeon, which is pretty damn remarkable for a guy who went to film school.

My stated goal as a filmmaker is to feel something. Is to have a palpable emotion in my life, carry it through the gauntlet of the filmmaking process and try and have it land for an audience at some point during the viewing experience. That to me is successful filmmaking.