I don't know what my favorite film of mine is... But I think the most important film I was in was 'Glory'.
When I make a film, I never want the film to become a vehicle of social propaganda. If I wanted to do that, I'd make documentaries.
I'm not making films for critics, I'm making films for people to go out and enjoy.
When you work so hard on making a film, it's all worthwhile when you get to experience seeing that film with an audience who thoroughly enjoy it and react to the movie.
I teach film directing, inasmuch as you can. It's not really possible to teach film direction, but I sit there as a sort of testimony of experience and know-how, I suppose.
I think a film is a failure if it doesn't have an emotional effect. That's the film's failure. Not if it doesn't deliver a message, but if it doesn't have emotional effect or visceral effect.
For many years I wanted to do a film, but I never had the courage to clear my desk and say, 'OK I'll take a year off and do a film.'
It's very cool to be able to say that my first real film was 'Footloose' and my second film I got to star alongside Tom Cruise and Catherine Zeta-Jones.
Walt Disney wasn't making films for kids. Neither were the Muppets. A lot of the great, really cool films, they weren't making them for kids.
When you see the films of certain young directors, you get the impression that film history begins for them around 1980.
Sci-fi films are the epic films of the day because we can no longer put 10,000 extras in the scene - but we can draw thousands of aliens with computers.
I made a French film called 'Merry Christmas' which is a very European film. It's a World War I piece.
I did two films that have a great following. One is 'Caddyshack,' one is 'Tron.' To tell you the truth, most people don't know that it's me in both films.
You can have a great character in a really bad script, and the film will never be seen. It's just too much work to commit to a film and not have it released.
Still, the film nearly didn't happen a number of times. There were great arguments with United Artists about how to reduce the cost because they were nothing if not conscious of the price of the film.
There was a time when I desperately wanted to be part of a Yash Chopra film, not because he was a great director, but because I was an outsider and I wanted that validation of being accepted in the film industry.
The great thing about filming a film is that you all have your final day's shooting, but you always know that you're all going to be coming back for the premiere.
I'd like to think at some point instead of it being a woman's film or a man's film, it is just a great story, and both sexes can go and get the same enjoyment out of it.
As I began making my feature films, it was a great adventure. It was about constructing something I saw in my head or I had designed on storyboards and capturing that on film.
I knew Secrets and Lies was a great film, but I didn't expect it to get the attention it did because none of his other films had and I thought they were just as good.
So, thanks God, our films, our first films were suddenly being appreciated by the Western media; especially France was very good, and Switzerland was very good.
