"Well, like any time you're shooting documentary stuff, you've got to be in the moment, and you've got to be able to be in control enough to capture what's happening"
About this Quote
De Palma’s line sounds almost Zen, but the subtext is pure craft anxiety: documentary “truth” doesn’t politely wait for your camera to find focus. His intent is to name the central paradox of nonfiction shooting (and, quietly, of filmmaking in general): you have to surrender to the chaos of real life while exerting just enough control to turn that chaos into a legible story. “Be in the moment” flatters the romantic idea of the filmmaker as a sensitive witness; “be in control enough” snaps it back into the realm of logistics, judgment, and power.
Coming from De Palma, a director associated with meticulous set pieces and camera choreography, the quote also reads as a confession. He’s acknowledging that even the most formally controlled cinema has a documentary problem at its core: reality is always threatening to slip past the frame. The best operators and directors aren’t passive recorders; they’re triage experts, constantly deciding what matters fast enough to preserve it.
The context is the late-20th-century bleed between documentary technique and narrative cinema, when handheld immediacy became a credibility aesthetic. De Palma isn’t celebrating roughness for its own sake; he’s talking about presence as a professional discipline. The phrase “capture what’s happening” carries a quiet violence, too: to capture is to take, to select, to claim ownership over an event. His realism is not innocence; it’s authorship under pressure, where “being there” is only half the job and control is the hidden half everyone pretends isn’t political.
Coming from De Palma, a director associated with meticulous set pieces and camera choreography, the quote also reads as a confession. He’s acknowledging that even the most formally controlled cinema has a documentary problem at its core: reality is always threatening to slip past the frame. The best operators and directors aren’t passive recorders; they’re triage experts, constantly deciding what matters fast enough to preserve it.
The context is the late-20th-century bleed between documentary technique and narrative cinema, when handheld immediacy became a credibility aesthetic. De Palma isn’t celebrating roughness for its own sake; he’s talking about presence as a professional discipline. The phrase “capture what’s happening” carries a quiet violence, too: to capture is to take, to select, to claim ownership over an event. His realism is not innocence; it’s authorship under pressure, where “being there” is only half the job and control is the hidden half everyone pretends isn’t political.
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