Lenny Abrahamson

“Frank's really different from everything I've done. Maybe the one thing that's the same, and the thing that I tend to do, is that I think I can create an intimacy with the characters, like a sense of presence with the people in the film, and that's what I tried to do in 'Room' as well.”

“Good filmmakers make bad films; it happens.”

“Delusion is not good; better to be realistic and then surprise yourself if you're lucky.”

“When we say 'cinematic', we tend to think John Ford and vistas and wide-open spaces. Or we think of kinetic camera movement or of a certain number of cinematic styles, like film noir.”

“I know that it's axiomatic in the film industry that you're not supposed to let the novelist develop their own story. Well, first of all, that's kind of up to the novelist - because they don't have to sell it. But also, I don't believe it. It's about trust.”

“I'm a bit of a pessimist, oh yeah, and I always think the film I'm about to make is going to be a disaster.”

“You can throw away your script more easily than you can throw away your film.”

“That's the way life is: meaning is always there, but there is no clearly given way of decoding it. Conventional cinema obscures this with an easy reduction of meaning to plot and schematic characters.”

“I wanted to make films that were culturally relevant in my own country, that challenged people, and that people talked about.”

“I remember as a kid being asked if I was Jewish or Irish. I said, like the glib little 15-year-old I was, 'You can be both.' Feeling very pleased with myself. Before they smacked me.”

“I'm interested in discontinuities and interruptions, people having to rewrite the narrative of their lives because of sudden changes.”

“I'm a big fan of American vaudeville and Hollywood silent film-era slapstick and the music halls full of ridiculous, eccentric characters.”

“I usually shower the night before, lay out all my clothes on the floor, so then I just fall into them, clean my teeth, stumble out the door, get into my car and go wherever it is that we're shooting. You have breakfast on set.”

“For me, I always think of the image of sweeping out my footprints as I walk through a scene.”

“I'm not an academic type in term of personality. I had my share of madness as a teenager.”

“Shooting 'Adam & Paul' was very tough. There was barely enough time, and the budget was tiny. On top of that, we shot in dangerous locations where we had little or no control or security.”

“Trying to make something as tricky as 'Room' really believable is extremely hard, and it largely rests with that relationship between the actors and the director, and the director and the crew.”

“The most conventional romantic trope of all is that you put lovers under extreme pressure, where they have to make decisions that illuminate aspects of that bond.”

“As a small kid, I had this huge desire to be thought of as really clever.”

“On your first film, you think these are going to be your closest friends for the rest of your life. You form a bond, but then you go back to the rest of your life.”