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that thing, and throw out another thing. But if you pay attention to the original idea—stay true to that—it’s surprising how, at the end, even the things that were accidents are honest.They’re true to the idea.

TEST AUDIENCE
     
     
     
    Although you can’t make a film with the audience in mind, at a certain point, before it’s finished, you need to experience the film with a group. Sometimes you lose your objectivity a little, and you need to get a feel for what’s working and what isn’t. That can be the worst screening—very close to hell on earth. But, again, the film’s not finished until it’s finished.
     
    After you screen it for that group, for the sake of the whole, certain things may have to be cut down or some things may need to be added. They’re not exactly mistakes. Some of the scenes that are removed from a film are kind of nice scenes on their own. But to let the whole thing work, they have to go. It’s part of the process—it always happens to some degree.

GENERALIZATIONS
     
     
     
    It’s dangerous, I think, to say that a woman in a film represents all women, or a man in a film represents all men. Some critics love generalizations. But it’s that particular character in this particular story going down that particular road. Those specific things make their own world. And sometimes it’s a world that we’d like to go into and experience.

DARKNESS
     
     
     
    People have asked me why—if meditation is so great and gives you so much bliss—are my films so dark, and there’s so much violence?
    There are many, many dark things flowing around in this world now, and most films reflect the world in which we live.They’re stories. Stories are always going to have conflict. They’re going to have highs and lows, and good and bad.
    I fall in love with certain ideas. And I am where I am. Now, if I told you I was enlightened, and this is enlightened filmmaking, that would be another story. But I’m just a guy from Missoula, Montana, doing my thing, going down the road like everybody else.
     
    We all reflect the world we live in. Even if you make a period film, it will reflect your times. You can see the way period films differ, depending on when they were made. It’s a sensibility—how they talk, certain themes—and those things change as the world changes.
    And so, even though I’m from Missoula, Montana, which is not the surrealistic capital of the world, you could be anywhere and see a kind of strangeness in how the world is these days, or have a certain way of looking at things.

SUFFERING
     
     
     
    It’s good for the artist to understand conflict and stress.Those things can give you ideas. But I guarantee you, if you have enough stress, you won’t be able to create. And if you have enough conflict, it will just get in the way of your creativity. You can understand conflict, but you don’t have to live in it.
     
    In stories, in the worlds that we can go into, there’s suffering, confusion, darkness, tension, and anger. There are murders; there’s all kinds of stuff. But the filmmaker doesn’t have to be suffering to show suffering. You can show it, show the human condition, show conflicts and contrasts, but you don’t have to go through that yourself. You are the orchestrator of it, but you’re not in it. Let your characters do the suffering.
    It’s common sense: The more the artist is suffering, the less creative he is going to be. It’s less likely that he is going to enjoy his work and less likely that he will be able to do really good work.
    Right here people might bring up Vincent van Gogh as an example of a painter who did great work in spite of—or because of—his suffering. I like to think that van Gogh would have been even more prolific and even greater if he wasn’t so restricted by the things tormenting him. I don’t think it was pain that made him so great—I think his painting brought him whatever happiness he had.
    Some artists believe that anger,