Luca Guadagnino: I don't much like post-modernism, because post-modern...

The idea of four people in a house dealing with each other is potentially inept unless the absorbed force of their own desires is questioned by a clash with reality, pantelleria as a sort of border place is really demanding to be understood by these characters and is asking them to pose themselves these ethical questions.

Luca Guadagnino

entertainment

Everything that goes outside the rules of Italian cinema has always been cursed.

Luca Guadagnino

rules everything always cinema

You know when they say you need to put people who go well together? I much prefer to put people who fight at the table. Then you have some sort of sparkle at the dinner!

Luca Guadagnino

fight you together people

If you desire something, you don't have it. It is more interesting than enjoyment, because enjoyment erases the mysteries and the vision of desire. Desire opens up possibilities but never achieves anything, whereas enjoyment is just the brutal achievement of something - and after that, it's done.

Luca Guadagnino

never you achievement vision

As a director, what matters is how you penetrate the soul of the person in front of the camera and let the actor blur the boundaries between the character and the person themselves. In order to achieve that, I try to make people feel at ease, to be mindless of problems and be skinless and give everything to the camera.

Luca Guadagnino

you soul character people

The point is that filmmaking is a collaborative effort; it isn't about imposing your vision on other people. It's about the talking, you know?

Luca Guadagnino

you effort vision people

The concept of making a movie in which the director dictates is kind of exotic - and absolutely not truthful. Directing means allowing a great deal of collaboration and listening and having the ability to change your mind.

Luca Guadagnino

great collaboration change mind

I am a Hitchcockian - I still believe that 'Psycho' sets the standard for mother/son relations.

Luca Guadagnino

i-am still psycho believe

I am a film director, and I work with a visual language, with a visual medium. And I try to make virtue of the use of this visual medium. And I try to make sure what I do speaks the language of cinema.

Luca Guadagnino

i-am cinema language work

Moviemaking is a dirty, tiring affair. The joy comes from the possibility to be free on set and really let loose.

Luca Guadagnino

tiring free joy dirty

I personally don't think that blood ties should be something that signifies so much more than anything else. I understand perfectly when somebody leaves their family for good.

Luca Guadagnino

good understand think family

I don't like post-modernism. It's cynical, and takes no discipline - you just copy. It doesn't allow a film to be open to reality.

Luca Guadagnino

copy you discipline reality

I'm one of those directors who read reviews, even if they're bad, because I started as a film critic as a cinema student. I indulge in the art of criticism in general.

Luca Guadagnino

bad cinema criticism art

I only cast the actors and actresses I fall in love with - truly having an emotion for them, an anticipation and enthusiasm when seeing them - and I believe that my emotional confidence in them blends into chemistry. It's always been like that, and I hope I won't be wrong in the future.

Luca Guadagnino

confidence future hope love

I'm a very eclectic person, and I enjoy multiple tastes; I'm like a bee who jumps from flower to flower. Before I die, I have to make a war movie, a Western, and a movie like Mike Nichols, because I love him.

Luca Guadagnino

die flower love war

I love to tell stories, but the making is less comfortable. I like to be private, and being in the middle of a film crew with the least amount of privacy is the discomfort of shooting a movie. For me, the editing is the great moment when I can bring back ideas and realize the movie for the last time before I hand it to the audience.

Luca Guadagnino

me moment time love

Making movies is about control. You need to control your narcissism in the first place, and you need to be disciplined enough to understand the reason for the film. You need to follow the agenda of the film, not a personal agenda or that of the studio. Or, worst of all, of the actors.

Luca Guadagnino

control place understand you

My father is a teacher; my mother was a telecom employee. I come from Palermo; I was raised in Ethiopia. I am homosexual. I didn't go to film school.

Luca Guadagnino

i-am mother teacher father

I am more interested in revolutionary beauty than in the great beauty, to be honest. Italian cinema is now mostly a bureau for tourism. We have given up that revolution of the contemporary.

Luca Guadagnino

i-am great cinema beauty

I think we shouldn't be shy of thinking that we can interpret text like a movie again, depending on the point of view and what we do with it more than anything else. Of course a lot of remakes of important films, particularly of horror films, they suck.

Luca Guadagnino

view think important thinking

I don't much like post-modernism, because post-modernist has become the basket in which every mediocre person can shuffle things and pretend to do something significant, and we could also mention who use post-modernism in this way - maybe we shouldn't.