Here are our favorite pieces of wisdom from this year’s field:
Pride, Ego, Hubris
“Nothing is funnier than confidently doing the wrong thing.” – Adam McKay
McKay, a writer/director known for his Will Ferrell collaborations (Anchorman, Talladega Nights, Step Brothers, The Other Guys), scored an Academy Award for his Big Short screenplay.
Inner Fortitude
“I think that in order to be a film director, one has to be a warrior who shouldn’t be defeated by the daily onslaught of problems. We are all hanging by threads and are the mercy of various elements, if one fails the whole flight could come crashing down, and like a good warrior I’m not going to break down.” – Alejandro G. Iñárritu
Iñárritu, the director of such works as 21 Grams, Babel, Birdman, and The Revenant, has been nominated for seven Academy Awards, winning five times. He is the first person to win back-to-back directing Oscars since Joseph L. Mankiewicz (1949-1950).
Every Underdog Has His Day
“To make these kinds of movies, in this day and age, we are immediately an underdog, and for an underdog to excel in any kind of team sport, they have to play a perfect game […]
Bigger, stronger, wealthier teams have more margin for error – they’ve got so much, and they’re going to keep throwing it at you. You see a tournament where an underdog team starts marching through, and why? Because they have peaked at just the right time.” – Tom McCarthy
McCarthy, actor and director, has been nominated for three Oscars, winning one statue for his Spotlight screenplay. Spotlight was awarded Best Picture overall.
Humanity
“People who don’t quite fit society, they are often kind of either under an awful lot of pressure or otherwise not acceptable to the mainstream and that tells us a lot about who we are. The people that don’t fit are a great way of reflecting on all of us.”
Abrahamson earned his first Academy Award nomination (Direction) for his work on Room.
The Power of Storytelling
“We are the servants of the zeitgeist and we live in a chaotic world. There is so much information coming at you, we are trying to find resonances out there to create some kind of meaning. Stories are a way of distilling something out of all that bombardment. They are a way of finding signal in the noise.”
Miller, nominated for six Academy Awards, won for Happy Feet. His diverse filmography includes the Mad Max series as well as Babe: Pig in the City, and Lorenzo’s Oil.
