"I think people will lose the film as soon as they start trying to figure out my logic or what I'm doing or while they're watching it start to dissect metaphors... I'm not really so interested in it working on a purely cerebral level. I'm much more concerned with it on an emotional level and that you leave feeling a certain way." - H.K.(photo by Ari Marcopoulos)
"I've been wanting to make a movie in this way for a while, I'd been playing with this type of structure and this thing is more like a liquid narrative, where time is more free, jumping forwards and backwards.. and the movie was more meant to mimic a drug experience, it was more like a ride or physical experience than anything.. almost more like micro scenes, things that were very quick and then extended and looped in some ways. Maybe the movie is more musical or experiential than it is traditionally narrative, so it's like a stew or a chemical reaction, you put all these things, you start to put locations and characters in one place and then shake it up and you document the explosion. [...] You set up a movie and you tell yourself that anything can happen--I do at least--I don't go in saying this is a right movie or this is a wrong movie, I go in with like there's this big margin that's undefined and that to me is what's exciting." -H.K.
(..replacing plot lines and expected narrative tropes with intuitively arranged “experiential moments”)
"There's not actually a lot of dialogue in the movie, I didn't want to make a movie with too much talking, I started to feel like sometimes words get in the way. I wanted to make a movie that worked also in an experiential way, just like something that was a physical experience, a movie that would almost like go through you in a physical way. [A lot of the best moments come from setting up a situation, a place, and seeing where they take it.] Improvising--I was never to fond of the word, it's something else..it's like the real world and we're just pushing it."
"You create this world. They're actors right, and they inhabit this world. And I say from the very beginning, there's no right or wrong. I say you just become part of it, you're fearless. It's not you, it's you, but it's not you. Nothing you do, there's no mistakes, it's all perfect. Directing to me starts even before you get to the set. Directing is fluid.. it's an abstract thing. It's not really done in only purely in the moment, it's an idea that you plant before, it's a location that you show, it's a whisper in someone's ear.. It's a free form thing."
"I don't think this is representative of like, all teenagers. I just think like, this is a small segment. But at the same time it's like I think this is taking place everywhere. I do think that kids are living like this wherever you go, even in rural areas across America, middle America, anywhere. Like even here in France, we invited some 15-year-old skateboard kids from the beach to see the movie, and afterwards they went, like, 'Dis ees my favorite movie. Dis ees my life.'" - H.K. at 21, as told to Roger Ebert
(sources: wiki, vice, toronto film festival press conference)
