Researching the Genre

Mike Mills: The Writer and Director

Since i really liked Beginners and this influenced my thinking on my film, i have done some research on the writer and director Mike Mills.
Mike Mills was born in 1966, Berkeley, California. He works as a filmmaker, graphic designer and artist. I think that is all reflected in Beginners, as the main character in the film plays an artist. As a filmmaker, he has completed a number of music videos, commercials, short films, documentaries, and the feature film Thumbsucker in 2005. I have not seen this film, but i wonder whether anyone reading this has?
He has made Architecture of Reassurance in 2000, which sounds like it is about someone wandering around their neighbourhood looking at other people's lives, Paperboys  in 2001, documents the daily life of six boys in rural Minnesota, a tour documentary of the French band Air and their audiences, and a short film documenting a famous jazz composer.

So all in all a wide range of different ventures - I wonder what his next one will be about.

Here is a quote from him: "That drifting thing is my life view. I do it a lot. I am intrigued by inanimate objects. They're a piece of history, someone's statement and ideas of life. If this was your room, the stuff on your table would be telling me as much about you as you. As someone who grew up in a house where there wasn't a lot of talking, I'm used to just looking at the world. And in general I often feel like I just don't understand what's happening. That everybody else does, but I don't quite get it. That camera technique I often call 'the alien that landed - and doesn't know what's important'.
Actors are pretending for you, but they're not lying. They are not putting on a guise instead of themselves. They are finding things inside that they have experienced."

Here is another quote from him, "Making a movie is so hard, you'd better make movies about something you really know about".    I agree with that!

And again: "And even more, it's really good to make movies about things you need to figure out for yourself, so you're driven the whole way through. It's going to make things more crucial for you".

I got these quotes from: http://www.imdb.com/