Michel Gondry

“It's very hard to say I'm surrealist. It's like saying I'm poetic. It's not something you want necessarily to be aware of.”

“I try to learn from both, from features and documentaries. In both cases you have to find a way to make the camera as discreet as possible, and flexible enough to be able to capture the moment when it happens. I know from documentary how to not have a preconceived idea of what the scene could be.”

“Pop music is created by repression - and then the system takes it and makes even more money with it!”

“The beauty of doing film is that you construct whatever you do block by block and you can build something that will stay.”

“I've always loved 3D. In fact, as a kid, I was exposed to 3D at an early age because my grandfather was a specialist of 3D in cinematheques. And then my cousin put it in 'Science of Sleep' with toilet paper tube cities. But he was a specialist and I always wanted to do something in 3D.”

“Sometimes it's interesting to see something that you're not used to seeing, which is the main ingredient of life, and it's removed from the usual entertainment. I think it's important to give the opportunity to people to witness the life of somebody who was not public.”

“People who get to express their voice are paid by the people who make profit from it. So they're going to make you believe you have to spend your money buying these products otherwise you won't be happy. This is really wrong. Especially the implication it carries.”

“Michael Jackson will always be my favorite pop musician; he was for years and years until his death, which was horrible to me. So I like pop culture. But to me, even if it's popular, there is a quality in the music you have to be able to appreciate.”

“I learned to drive when I was 35. I'm driving like an old lady and very close to the wheel. I don't take many risks, and when people yell at me I say 'sorry, sorry, sorry!' I don't have road rage yet.”

“Perhaps my favourite story is 'Le Passe-Muraille' by Marcel Ayme. It's about a guy who wakes up with a weird faculty that means he can walk through walls. He's a very shy clerk, and he uses it to get revenge, or vent his frustration.”

“I don't call cut between the takes - it's my way to help the actor keep focused. As soon as you say 'cut' you have 10 people jumping on them and everybody's trying to do a great job, and they do, but sometimes they forget that the more important thing is the performance, creating the performance.”

“I think my imagination dictates the technologies I use. But at the same time, my imagination can be technologic. Sometimes I see a tool and I know immediately how to use it, but most of the time I use the tool for an idea I already have.”

“That's what the internet is: it's like bombarding your eyeballs with these myriad blinking colour lights. It's like trying to watch a movie on your phone in the middle of Times Square.”

“I think it's a problem when journalists have the title of their article before they do the interview, because it biases the way they conduct it.”

“In my opinion, it's more interesting to see magic happening in a world that feels grounded. If the world is already crazy, then anything can happen. So it's better to start with something real.”

“At school I was very shy. I wasn't funny really.”

“I shoot people in a way that makes the audience feel equal to them. And it's hard to express and it's hard to execute but I think it works on every level - the choice of the material the choice of the actor, my relationship with the actor, and so on.”

“My father had a Super 8 camera when I was a kid and sometimes he would use it. I did some animation with it. I did a lot of flipbooks.”

“I'm part of the consumer culture... I'm just using the space I am given to express something that is out of the space so I'm part of the consumer system but I'm advocating stepping out. Which is a contradiction but I could be part of he consumer system and say, 'let's consume even more.'”

“I'm attracted to working with comedians because they don't have that stars' idea of what a hero should be. The downside is they're always addressing the camera too much.”