A biography for Jeff Nicholshasn’t been written yet.
“It's amazing how far you can get into a plot before you figure out what you're doing.”
“We have a problem with dealing with race in our country. We have a problem with dealing with marriage equality and equality in general. These are complex, divisive issues in our society, and I think that the only way we further this conversation is to take them down to a very human scale.”
“I'm not as worried about the process of writing, simply because I think I've got that one down, you know? I think I know what brings specificity to these ideas, what brings specificity to the genre elements, or anything else, and it's personal emotions.”
“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.'”
“Endings don't have anything to do with what your movie is about. Now, there is an emotional climax, there's an emotional resolution that is 100 percent important. If I get that wrong, get your money back.”
“'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.”
“'Take Shelter' is a tough movie because there's no humor in it, so there's really no way to judge how you're doing - whether people are still with you or not.”
“As a director, you see something in someone; you know it's there, you just got to go get it. You do that with any actor. That's your job.”
“My connection to 'Aquaman' came out through the Sony hack. It had no relationship to reality. I was not on that film. I was not hired to work on that film. I had been talking to Warner Bros. about it.”
“It took me a year just to edit 'Shotgun Stories.' Actually, it took me two years to edit 'Shotgun Stories.'”
“There's a reason why I use film. It's because it's the best representation of how our eyes work. I really believe that. I think it's better than digital.”
“It takes people being alone in front of the computer at three in the morning to write opinions about movies, apparently.”
“We have so many films that we can fit into the slate a year, and we spend $100 million on those films in order to make $400 million dollars. We don't spend $20 million in hopes of eking out $40 million.”
“I think plot is very overrated. Plot is obviously necessary, but what I really care about is emotionally affecting the audience. Having a thought myself and then an emotional experience myself, somehow transferring that to the audience.”
“I think too often in films, people think endings are a summation of plot, and I don't like that. Because once you know where you're going as an audience member, then it's like a video game. You're just waiting for them to get through the levels and beat the bad guy. And I just think that's boring.”
“I like scripts. I spend a lot of time writing them.”
“Write dialogue that supports the situation and the characters, as you find them.”
“If you want someone to show up and execute your script for you, seriously, there are a lot of great people out there. Don't call me.”
“I grew up in Arkansas, and I went to Little Rock Central High, which was the site of a desegregation crisis in '57. I graduated in '97.”
“One of my favorite directors is Clint Eastwood, and I hear about the way he works, and I think I'm of a similar style. Very few takes - you get what you take, and you move on. It's very much a job and work.”