Mike Mills Trying Quotations

I've always known that I love directing but I was really aware of it while making 'Beginners.' I am my happiest when I'm on set directing. I am also my kindest. When the actors get in front of the camera, it makes them very vulnerable. I am so in love with them for trying so hard.

When a film works, the director had a lot to do with that, but the director also didn't have a lot to do with that. There are so many moving parts. It's really about being open to how the river is flowing and trying to get on the river.

To be honest, we have no control over what's going on with a movie, much less what people are going to think of it. Your whole life is wound up in it but you don't have control and you have to get used to being on that turbulent plane without trying to fly it. The less you think about all that the better.

Life doesn't just happen; it's constructed through the history of power. And that's something I am interested in and so is the art world: a world that's trying to engage socially, with a leftist slant, to work out how we got here.

I think I make films to help bolster and feed the part of me that wants to remain in a positive relationship with the world and to engage in it. So hopefully in non-sentimental ways, I'm trying to make something that helps make me happy.

You have this 18-year old who is trying to figure out his life. But you also have these 40-year-olds who are trying to figure out their lives, and this whole myth of, 'Once I have a family, a house, a husband, this hole I felt will be filled up and I'll be OK,' ... At 40 they're, 'Wait a minute, it's not all OK, I still have all those problems. What do I do now?' And I'm really happy to have both of those problems and both of those ages in the same story.

Over and over again, I'm trying to express or communicate these big and small struggles to the world, and really to myself.