A biography for Kevin Macdonaldhasn’t been written yet.
“With 'Black Sea,' I long had an idea that I wanted to do a film about people stuck on the bottom of the ocean. I thought that was a terrifying scenario.”
“When you're an outsider and going into a culture like America, it's easier to stay away from any cliches because you're not really aware of what they are.”
“I was born at Rotten Row in Glasgow and brought up in Loch Lomond near a small place called Gartocharn. And it's a bit like anyone: where you're brought up, you have an irresistible attraction to that place; it defines who you are.”
“I did not want to depict Al Gashey as evil. I wanted him to come across as someone who did what he did for reasons that were compelling. Whether or not we agree with him is a different matter.”
“I love Humphrey Jennings. People ask me who my favorite documentary maker is, and he's certainly in the top three.”
“I don't think of myself particularly as a Scottish director, but you are what you are because the first ten years of your life, and where you spend them, brand you. In that sense, I'll always be a Scottish director.”
“When we made 'Life in a Day,' we asked people around the globe to record their lives on a single ordinary day. When we were cutting that film, we talked about what it might be like if we chose a day that already had significance to people. The result is 'Christmas in a Day.'”
“I suppose that I'm easily bored.”
“We should not confuse having a Flip camera with making a documentary.”
“I suppose that the Western has always been a kind of mold to which you could pour the concerns of the day, but have them seen in the simple terms of the Western, of one alley or whatever.”
“I find it really difficult when you make a movie where it is set in Russia and everyone speaks in English. It drives me crazy.”
“I think my brother always wanted to be a film producer.”
“John Lennon made wonderful music, which people listen to as music. Nobody around the world is living their life according to the precepts of John Lennon.”
“For me, the aim of making any film like this, any film about an artist, would be to send you back to the art.”
“We're all fascinated by the way other people live their lives, how they cope with hardship and triumph, what they put in their home movies and family albums.”
“I've done a few celebrity-related things, and I think on the first one - about Mick Jagger - I got stung and was not able to make the film I wanted to make.”
“When you're trying to make a film, you're trying to find a way to love your subject, and you want your audience to love your subject.”
“I like to take a little of what I learned in fiction and apply it to documentary and vice versa.”
“It is hard to find the soul of Mick Jagger. It is very hidden. I think his true personality has receded so far behind the facade that he can no longer find the real person himself.”
“The interesting thing to me is that somehow the future of movies will become a more social thing... I think that people will see them communally and will be talking about them as they're watching them, in a way, and immediately after watching them, and they'll all become the conversation. I think that's pretty interesting.”