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Lenny Abrahamson [1966-0] Irish

Rank: 101
Director, Film director

Leonard "Lenny" Abrahamson is an Irish film and television director. Abrahamson is known for his films Adam & Paul, Garage, What Richard Did, Frank and the Oscar-winning Room.

Jealousy, Romantic

Quote	Tags	Rank
Hollywood is probably the most active centre of film-making in the world, but it's also a very difficult place in which to find your voice... It was also a far more civilised industry in Ireland.		101
I went to Poland for the Warsaw Film Festival, and it was quite an intense experience. I didn't think it would be, but it did feel quite emotional to go back to this place I'd heard so much about.		102
I'm interested in discontinuities and interruptions, people having to rewrite the narrative of their lives because of sudden changes.		103
'Frank''s really different from everything I've done. Maybe the one thing that's the same, and the thing that I tend to do, is that I think I can create an intimacy with the characters, like a sense of presence with the people in the film, and that's what I tried to do in 'Room' as well.		104
There are more ways to make 'Room' badly than well.		105
I don't think of myself as doing good works. It's not, 'Oh, I must give these poor people a voice.'		106
I've been in rooms where people are discussing films that have yet to come out and saying delightedly, 'Oh, I've heard it's a disaster!' The jealousy is unseemly.	Jealousy	107
I remember as a kid being asked if I was Jewish or Irish. I said, like the glib little 15-year-old I was, 'You can be both.' Feeling very pleased with myself. Before they smacked me.		108
The most conventional romantic trope of all is that you put lovers under extreme pressure, where they have to make decisions that illuminate aspects of that bond.	Romantic	109
It's something I've noticed with my two children - children frequently know and don't know at the same time. They are aware of aspects of the world that are a little bit shadowy, and they choose not to engage with them.		110
As soon as you make some films that people like, you'll be sent material, and that can come from anywhere.		111
You can throw away your script more easily than you can throw away your film.		112
When I read 'Room,' I absolutely loved it, and I thought I knew how to make it.		113
As with any actor and any collaborator, it's about forming a trusting relationship. And that's not that you have to get him to trust you so you can get him to do what you want. Especially with a little kid, it's about making them feel really safe, and getting to know and not treating them as a puppet to be moved around.		114
People say that soundstage sets never quite look like reality. But actually, they can. They can be as real as you want as long as you pay attention to the kind of detail that is given for free in a real place.		115
In something like 'Frank,' which is a comedy, albeit a strange and emotional one, you can absolutely put in deleted scenes, and we did because they were just funny and great, but they weren't necessary in the overall structure.		116
I'm not setting out to adapt books and work with books, but when really amazing stories come to you in that form, it's really hard to turn away from that.		117
I'm a bit of a late developer, generally. But the good thing about being a filmmaker is you still count as young all the way through your 40s.		118
Generally speaking, the misfit's story is easier to tell.		119
I remember a Q&A I did in Wales where there were five people in the auditorium.		120
I'm looking for an intensity of focus. It's a bit like tuning a guitar string. You tighten and tighten, and nothing really changes until you hit that tension, and suddenly it's there: you've got a note.		121
Films should have the capacity to bring you into another world.		122
I'm Irish; I grew up in Ireland, and it's impossible to separate my background from who I am as a filmmaker.		123
Ireland is a good place to start out as a filmmaker. If what you do is good, even at a very small scale, it will get recognized.		124
As far as the international industry is concerned, I don't think people care at all where you are from - if the work interests them.		125
I've never worked in the U.K. television industry, but my guess it that it's a tough world for directors.		126
That's the way life is: meaning is always there, but there is no clearly given way of decoding it. Conventional cinema obscures this with an easy reduction of meaning to plot and schematic characters.		201
Cinema at its best can express something of the pure irreducible fact of things.		202
Shooting 'Adam & Paul' was very tough. There was barely enough time, and the budget was tiny. On top of that, we shot in dangerous locations where we had little or no control or security.		203
The process of shooting - of choosing shots - is intuitive for me, and I just feel my way towards what seems right.		204
As a filmmaker, I've sat on the other side, and I've watched when people I know have a film, and it's doing really well, and people are talking about it in all the trades, and everybody is excited about it, and I've always thought, 'Hmm, what would that be like?'		205
There's so much pressure on kids to perform and to be the best they can be, and particularly with boys: boys who are the gifted ones get loaded with an awful lot of expectation and self-expectation, and that's really hard for an 18 year old.		206
I'm a bit of a pessimist, oh yeah, and I always think the film I'm about to make is going to be a disaster.		207
Delusion is not good; better to be realistic and then surprise yourself if you're lucky.		208
Good filmmakers make bad films; it happens.		209
The style of direction in 'Room,' maybe a little bit like 'Spotlight,' tries to be hidden.		210
I think, as directors, they may recognize, more than the rest of the body of filmmakers, exactly what you do as a director, because I think sometimes the conception is if the camera isn't swinging around, and it's not pyrotechnic or worthily melodramatic, then the direction is uninvolved.		211
Trying to make something as tricky as 'Room' really believable is extremely hard, and it largely rests with that relationship between the actors and the director, and the director and the crew.		212
I'm a big fan of American vaudeville and Hollywood silent film-era slapstick and the music halls full of ridiculous, eccentric characters.		213
Most of my work has been independent movies outside the mainstream system.		214
I am an unusual Irishman. I'm probably Ireland's third most famous Jewish son.		215
I did go to cheder and was a bar mitzvah. We were members of an Orthodox synagogue, although we were not religious. My grandfather was Polish. He came to Ireland in the '30s.		216
For me, I always think of the image of sweeping out my footprints as I walk through a scene.		217
There's a fashion for a macho style of filmmaking. How long can your longest take be? And shooting things in one shot. For me, if you can sort of disappear and make people feel that they are there, that involves massive amounts of work.		218
I love the cinema, but I'm not a fascist about it. I've had some of my best experiences watching things on TV. But if I were Stalin, I would force everyone to be in the theater.		219
I think digital is getting so much better. It's harder and harder to make the argument now for film. All things being equal, though, I still prefer to capture on film.		220
It drove me as a kid. I couldn't bear the idea that I wasn't the smartest. Then I got put in a B stream for four years at my school. And that was the making of me in a weird way.		221
Having started in sciences, I then turned around and said, 'Oh, I don't want to do sciences. I want to do philosophy.' And to their credit my parents said, 'if that's what you want to do, then go for it'. Then I got the scholarship to Stanford, which was very nice for the parents to talk to their friends about.		222
I started to make some commercials, which was a way for me to finally make a living at last. But it was only really a couple of films in that it looked like a viable career option.		223
When we say 'cinematic', we tend to think John Ford and vistas and wide-open spaces. Or we think of kinetic camera movement or of a certain number of cinematic styles, like film noir.		224
I always felt there was a kind of humanistic impulse in my thinking about film as well as a real interest in its formal and aesthetic properties - just this idea that it can bring you into a very intimate encounter with people.		225
I know that it's axiomatic in the film industry that you're not supposed to let the novelist develop their own story. Well, first of all, that's kind of up to the novelist - because they don't have to sell it. But also, I don't believe it. It's about trust.		226
A big part of filmmaking is gathering a group of people you can work with.		301
'Room' was a particularly cohesive group, crew and cast.		302
I'm fascinated by people who have to reinvent themselves. I did it a few times - I was going to be a physicist before I was passionate about philosophy - and I realized that one more change, and I'm going to start looking like a dilettante.		303
I can just remember being broke, wondering if I had any talent - really wondering whether this was all a fantasy - but I had to get out there and keep trying.		304
'Room' is a very subtly-made film, and directing awards tend to go to the flashier stuff, but it's the Director's section of the academy that make the decision, so I'm very proud they can see something in what I directed and wanted to reward it.		305
The title, the name Frank, comes from this extraordinary British character Frank Friedbottom. He was very big in Britain in the '80s, but I, as an Irish kid, saw him on 'Top of the Charts.'		306
I usually shower the night before, lay out all my clothes on the floor, so then I just fall into them, clean my teeth, stumble out the door, get into my car and go wherever it is that we're shooting. You have breakfast on set.		307
When I'm shooting, it averages out at a 16-hour day. You have two deadlines everyday - lunch and wrap.		308
It's very important to have a good relationship with the crew and cast because you want to get the best out of them. They'll work really hard for you if they like you.		309
When you're shooting, there's terrible pressure, and you never switch off. Every day is like the day before an exam; it's relentless.		310
I was a bachelor for a long time, and I got into all these really lazy habits work-wise. I'd just work as long as I wanted into the night. There was no structure.		311
I'm not an academic type in term of personality. I had my share of madness as a teenager.		312
I think people like to have their categories clear. They want to know if it's fiction or fact, biopic or not.		313
The thing about America - it's different everywhere, but visually, it's amazing to shoot in the desert in the New Mexico light. It's really hard to shoot in that desert and make anything look not amazing.		314
On your first film, you think these are going to be your closest friends for the rest of your life. You form a bond, but then you go back to the rest of your life.		315
Established actors will challenge you if they don't agree with the way you are taking it, and you have to argue it. But with a younger cast, they are more likely to wonder whether what they are doing is okay instead of trying to second guess the director. That helps push you.		316
I think that I must be the only person who left California and headed to Dublin in pursuit of a career in film. The arrow is pointing in the other direction in most people's minds.		317
If you're in Hollywood, with no track record, it's pretty odds-on that you can get swamped and overwhelmed by the sheer scale of it all; particularly with the intense commercial push that you feel there.		318
There was a golden era in film-making in Hollywood back in the 1970s, and although there is some great independent film-making in America, it's actually very hard to get independent films made in the United States. It's much more feasible from Europe.		319
I was interested in the narrative of how we nurture our elite in this society: all that stuff about believing in yourself and not accepting second best. Our inner world is at odds with that.		320
After 'Adam and Paul,' I had offers from American agents, but I think I would have been swallowed up.		321
I wanted to make films that were culturally relevant in my own country, that challenged people, and that people talked about.		322
As a small kid, I had this huge desire to be thought of as really clever.		323
I can think back to being four or five and not wanting to sit at the kids' table because I thought it was demeaning. I was this ridiculous little kid.		324
I came from a classic, literate, intellectual Jewish family.		325
Although I was really interested in physics, I think I wanted to do it because I thought it was really hard. I did theoretical physics.		326

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