Ask Away: The Best of 2010's Movieline Interviews

Another year, another... oh, couple hundred interviews in the books for the staff at Movieline HQ. It's next to impossible to whittle this towering stack down to a manageable year-end review, but read on for a reasonable cross-section of the best, smartest, funniest and/or most candid moments from our magnanimous guests of 2010.

Sebastian Junger and Tim Hetherington (Jan. 23)

On filmmaking in combat: "[Junger:] The most scared I ever was was in a situation where we were hit very hard, and I was separated from my camera. There was too much gunfire for me to get to my camera, which was like 10 feet away. I was completely discombobulated. As soon as you have the camera in your hand, you have a purpose -- a point. Without the camera you're just getting shot at. The camera was its own kind of anesthetic. I felt that my job was to record what was happening as thoroughly as possible, and there was a real sense of purpose to my job. Without the camera, it was a passive situation and I was just getting shot at. It was terrifying. The camera was the only refuge."

Tilda Swinton (Jan. 25)

On Conan O'Brien wanting her to play him in the movie version of his exile from NBC: "I've heard about Conan! I'm so thrilled. I would just be only too happy [to play him]. Yes, yes, yes, absolutely. What I really would love to do is get him to do some of the things I get to do. It would be nice if he were here at Sundance maybe, wearing this coat, talking about I Am Love. And why not? Every girl should have a doppelganger."

RuPaul (Feb. 1)

On being a role model: "Role model territory is a tricky thing to navigate though. I've never conducted my career with the idea that I am a role model. I think if people are inspired by the things I do, I think that's rocking, but it's not my goal to be a role model because the truth is that people find inspiration from all over. I'm human and I would never want to thwart my creativity because I think it offends someone. I'm always going to do what inspires me first. If somebody else gets off on it, right on. And if they don't, right on."

Jackie Collins (Feb. 17)

On what makes a penis "angry," as described in her latest novel: "That's a very interesting question. But you can tell immediately: They have kind of a shriveled look, and red. Very red. You can spot an angry penis a mile away, can't you?"

Michel Gondry (March 15)

On Lady Gaga and the decline of the music video: "I'm not interested. To me it's like a form of Marilyn Manson. It's hard for me to talk about it; I've seen a couple of videos of hers, and not for very long. I stop watching them each time because I don't think there's melodies. I'm sorry to be negative. [... I]n 1999 or 2000, MTV and VH1 did the 100 Best Videos of All Time -- two different selections -- and I had zero videos in either of them. So when people tell me I'm the 'MTV Generation,' I just say, 'No.' I never won any MTV [Video Music Awards]. Oh, except for one for a video I did for Massive Attack, actually, and I lost it. My producer was furious. He wanted to put it in his office. But I loved videos. I remember watching videos very late at night -- Michael Jackson videos. The first rap videos were amazing: Run-DMC, Tone Loc, all of that was just amazing. The Beastie Boys videos were always great. But then it became very stereotyped. There was this confusion. Also: The MTV Video Awards were never about the video, but about the song. Most of the time it was just to glorify people for the wrong reason."

Nicolas Winding Refn (July 21)

On flirting with the mainstream: "I think every time I make a film, I say to myself that I write, produce and control. That's all I've done so far. Now I say, 'Oh, this is the one. Now I'm really going to show [Hollywood]!' You know? But at the same time, I've been very lucky with them. They get released, people watch them, and people have emotions about them, either good or bad. It truly doesn't matter to me as long as people have a reaction. I am going to Hollywood now to do a movie with Ryan Gosling called Drive, which is about a stuntman by day and a getaway driver by night. But the sensibility of the novella that it's based on [by James Sallis] very much speaks to me. So I feel very comfortable working within that. But I would love to make one of those Hollywood, $100 million extravaganzas. At the same time, I'm also very content in my situation. I get to make the films I want to make. I don't have the ego of world dominance."

Robert Duvall (July 28)

On the upside of subversion: "[Bill Murray] took [Get Low director] Aaron [Schneider] aside and said, 'There are a lot of people here you're not listening to, and you should listen more.' I didn't do that. With the other actors, maybe I'll do that. I don't know if you saw Broken Trail. One of my favorites -- TV again. But there was AMC and all these different camps trying to take the writing a different way. So finally I said to the writer, "Every day, we have to practice quiet, continuous anarchy. We'll slip the writing under the door, we'll rewrite when we want to. We've got to, because they're ruining it." And in 16 days we re-edited it. We had to! And it was one of the best experiences of my life -- even though it was craziness. So you can work under duress, you can work under friction. Sometimes when things are perfect, they're too perfect. Resistance is good."

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