Mike Mills Thinking Quotations

No one leaves the edit room thinking, 'Yeah, I nailed that one!' Everyone I know goes into their first premiere or their first screening thinking, 'I screwed up so bad. I'm sorry, I messed up.' It's just a real common feeling.

I would hate to think I'm promoting sadness as an aesthetic. But I grew up in not just a family but a town and a culture where sadness is something you're taught to feel shame about. You end up chronically desiring what can be a very sentimental idea of love and connection. A lot of my work has been about trying to make a space for sadness.

If you ask me, the place that a story happens is as equal character. It's almost like an ecological viewpoint: These people are living in this piece of land, and in this piece of land in this time this is possible. For me, I almost think location first. It's time first - what year is it - then where are we, and then who is in it.

There's nothing like a movie. It's the one art form that can really make me cry, and the thing is, we're all filmmakers. We're all creating movies in our heads all the time on our internal projection screens. To have the experience of playing out that movie, and making it real, it was very moving... in fact, I was crying my eyes out last night because I was thinking of how special the whole thing was,

Film is endlessly just beyond your reach. I think that's what I love so much about it.

My graffiti really comes more from a May '68, sort of Situationist vibe than the hip-hop world. I think a real graffiti artist would find me a poser.