The Talks
Ryan Gander: “It wants your attention”
Ryan, as an artist, how often do you find yourself daydreaming?
The places where I am most creative, I think, are in the car, in the shower, when I wake up in the middle of the night, or doing the washing up. Those are places where I don’t have my telephone, and that’s when I daydream. That’s the great thing about life, isn’t it? Our ability to imagine. It’s what separates us from animals. The other day I gave a talk in the art class of my eldest child, she’s nine years old, and the first thing I asked was, “Who here is a daydreamer?” And one of the kids said, “Oh, it’s really bad to daydream, the teachers and my parents always tell me to stop it.” That is mad! (Laughs)
There seems to be an unwritten rule that once you become an adult, daydreaming is considered a waste of time.
And ironically, when we think of the values of things in our lives, we think about money and space as being two of our greatest assets. But in fact, our greatest assets are time and attention! Not everybody is born with the same amount of resources, money, privilege, but everybody is born with the same amount of time. It’s what we do with our time, it’s what we give our attention to that’s important. If you look at social media and all the big subjects of today, when you take them back to their bare bones, all they are doing is trying to manipulate us, or to distract us to take our attention and to take our time.
“In your life there’s a moment when the door opens and you need to walk through the door then. You can’t say then, “Well, I’ll go through it two years from now. I’ll do it, I’ll save up some money...” Because by then the door will be closed.”
“I think as you are growing up, deciding what you want to do is really the process of elimination rather than gravitating towards something until you land on what really makes you happy.”
“The journey of an artist is a journey of discovery and some engagement with the nature of material, with bodily things and all that has led me to this place. I’m really interested in that as a process because the process moves you in directions that you couldn’t rationally put there.”
“I really lacked confidence at the very beginning. At first I was quite intimidated! I wasn’t accepted in the kitchen initially, I wasn’t part of the system; the other chefs didn’t welcome me. But in the end, those experiences made all the difference. It freed me.”
“Life is struggle. Life is about struggle. You’re not supposed to be happy all the time. It’s about challenging yourself and pushing yourself, you know? You become content. That’s not happiness.”
“I think the final circle in being an artist is connecting, making some conversation to the world you’re in. I think if you have that feeling of why you need to do something, you’ll find a way. And I think that really takes you forward! If you’re feeling that, maybe other people need that to.”
“There is something quite beautiful with the art thing, that you can only hold it back for so long and then you have to do it.”
“It’s been a lot harder than I thought it was going to be to make the films I really dream of making. It’s heartbreaking when that happens, but it’s all okay. It requires patience.”
“Wherever any of us have been wounded, if we dive into what those wounds are, if we go down into and do the hard work within those wounds, we’ll actually find ourselves, we’ll find our real giftedness, a sincere, true giftedness.”
“I am less anxious to have a successful career. There were times when I was anxious — even in the past, people said, ‘You make successful films.’ But my films were never successful. Even The Godfather got a terrible review. My films did better over time.”
“Writing itself should be so extreme, so wild, and so much fun that it doesn’t matter whether or not you ever sell the book.”
“As I began to take risks, leaving my very comfortable and secure job and taking this first leap into fashion, every subsequent risk became easier to take because I began to see the kind of opportunity and excitement that risk-taking offered.”
“Life is confounding and who knows what’s around the next corner. But in many ways uncertainty can be exhilarating—there’s a lot of freedom in it. It would be a shame to waste our snippet of time on this planet being afraid.”
“You don’t have to please everybody. As long as you and the people whose opinions you respect are comfortable and happy with it, then… keep going! Keep making that weird stuff.”
“Right now we are 40 people working in Osteria Francescana, for 28 or 30 covers a night. So, it’s totally the opposite of a business. You cannot survive with that. But we believe in those kinds of dreams and so I keep investing, and reinvesting, and reinvesting.”
“When you are at a crossroads, mistakes can help you decide the right way forward, and I think I really grew when I understood that I need to accept my mistakes.”
“I never have been into trends. Not now or then! I was born like that, in fact, if I see too much of something, I change it. I like independence. I love the eccentrics. Find your style and stick to it.”
“At what point do you feel you’ve achieved it and you can move on? I think you usually have to start thinking, ‘So what’s next?’”
“I follow the beat of my own drum. I think I’ve gotten more confident and self-trustful in my ability and my natural appetite for play, and not over-adorning it with anything. I’ve always been disciplined and I’m still nothing if not conscientious.”
“I’ve been through some incredibly tough times in my career but I persevered and came out the other side. And that teaches you strength, how to handle being put under pressure. Experience is a big thing — just knowing that you can pull yourself back up again.”
“Everybody is amazing at something — some people write music, some people are leaders, some people raise children, some people cook food. If you find what it is that you can offer to your fellow.”
“I just keep imagining myself thirty years from now thinking, ‘Why didn’t you take advantage of all the opportunities you had? Look at all the people you could have worked with, the roles you could have done. Go for it.’ And that’s what I am thinking.”
“I used to tease the other kids because I played better than them. Then my father said, ‘Come here. Don’t do this with the kids, because God gave you the gift to play football. You didn’t do anything. You have to respect people, be a good person. From now on, you must be this example.’”
“Making something or creating something is about looking and exploring the potential, and I want to do that right up until the day of the performance. And then when we’re performing, I want to do it a bit more. There’s no reason we can’t.”
“In life it’s about opening yourself up. It’s about tapping into your instincts and your energies. I think I got very good at that. I have to be open and I have to be open to the possibilities.”
“I act on intuition. I just let my intuition go in situations of fear. I live from my heart. I will continue doing things the way I have done them my whole life. And it gave me mostly a great time.”
“Architecture is the oddest profession. In the beginning you're very much involved in finding your voice and locating yourself artistically. For 25 years you're working with small projects, domestic projects. And then you mature at 50 and you're given your first projects.”
“The truth. The whole truth, and nothing but the truth, so help me God. And that’s it! May it be ugly, may it be beautiful, may it be perverse, may it be all of those things. That’s it, I can’t lie; it is what it is, unabashed, naked. I expect that of myself, that’s for sure.”
“The recognition of luck is extraordinarily important — as well as making the best of it and creating to the best of your capabilities on that one opportunity you’re given so that it doesn’t end up in the museum of errors.”
“I think all actors have to be dreamers. I think every citizen of every kind of society has to dream. If you stop dreaming, it’s over.”
“We're not having to run from predatory animals like we did for hundreds of thousands of years before. So now we have to make up new activities to fulfill those emotional needs. There is a certain something about the ever-present danger of death that makes living so great.”
“I don’t like plan Bs. If you don’t have a plan B, then you can’t take plan B. Don’t give yourself an out.”
“I can’t make people happy if I’m not happy myself. That applies to anyone who tries to achieve something in their life: if you’re not happy, you can’t transfer any happiness to anyone else.”
“I try not to look back. I’m looking forward. I’m worried more about what I’m going to do next week than I am what I did last week. There are too many things to do. Looking back is for everybody else.”
“The only thing that you have to be very sure of is that nothing can go wrong. You can’t get in the way of the whole thing by messing it up with great ideas or smart moves. Absolute trust is, I think, the crucial ingredient.”
“I wouldn’t ever compromise on the essential, on the essence of a project, the ideas or the themes.”
“If you’re doing one thing, you can burn yourself out. But for me, if ever one of those things burnt out, I would have moved to another one. So it makes it difficult but it makes it possible to keep going.”
“I think the key to having a successful career is to find the thing you do well and do it again and again for the rest of your life. But I’m interested in expanding my language as an artist and as a composer. And I try to expand it with every project.”
“When I was younger I had these moments where I was surprising myself with my spontaneity, and I thought, ‘This is what you should be chasing.’ The cerebral part of acting and the perfectionism can be exhausting, but the spontaneity can be very joyful.”
“I think it’s so good to try new things and open the window and let some fresh air in and try to eliminate any regrets.”
Francis Ford Coppola: “It’s a devastating decision”
Mr. Ford Coppola, do you see your influence in the work of other filmmakers?
You know, that’s a funny subject you bring up. When I was young, I wanted to be Tennessee Williams or Elia Kazan, so I would steal anything I could from them because that was my idea of greatness. And the truth of the matter is that if a young person is influenced by something I do, he’s welcome to it because there’s no way you can steal from another person.
Because ultimately it’s your version of that idea.
Right, you do it in your own way. Even as hard as I tried to steal from Tennessee Williams, it came out some other way. And that’s the purpose of art. It means you live on in somebody else’s work, which is something very pleasant as a thought. So if something I did influenced another film or if I had some small part in encouraging them, then I am pleased.
