I think movie sets can often be stressful, and people take themselves very seriously.
How you start the movie is critical. And how often you feel that there's no reason for how it's starting.
Making a movie in Hollywood is a bit like playing a board game, where you have to throw a six to start.
My filmmaking really began with technology. It began through technology, not through telling stories, because my 8mm movie camera was the way into whatever I decided to do.
I'm not a drama person, but when you can make a movie in song form in three-and-a-half minutes, it's surreal.
I would never do 'Stardust Memories' because I don't particularly like that kind of movie - that would be why I wouldn't do that.
I get a little nauseous and disoriented watching 3D, but as a kid I loved it and I was really into it, so if a movie can be in 3D, then why not?
It sometimes feels like a strange movie, you know, it's all so weird that sometimes I wonder if it is really happening.
Ruby in Paradise and the intensity and quality that I was able to experience on Smoke were equally as important to me as working on this movie every day for three-and-a-half months.
I will take the subway and look at certain women and think 'God, that woman's story will never be told. How come that lady doesn't get a movie about her?'
When I get a script, it's the only time that I get to be an audience member with the first-time experience of that movie. That's the first and only time.
When I worked on 2001 - which was my first feature film - I was deeply and permanently affected by the notion that a movie could be like a first-person experience.
I still that that movie-goers like the experience of leaving their homes and going to have a communal experience, especially in comedies or interactive things where you can get an audience reaction to.
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.
Cinema is visually powerful, it is a complete experience, reaches a different audience. It's something I really like. I like movies.
Like Hollywood movies, MTV and blue jeans, fast food has become one of America's major cultural exports.
American movies and music deliver themes of freedom, innocence, and power that appeal to others - partly because America itself was put together out of a multiplicity of national traditions.
Family entertainment is really very necessary in our culture. Look how profitable they are. It's almost not discretionary. You need to take your family to the movies.
I was too young to be an avid enthusiast for the franchise, but like billions of people I remember as a child sitting around with the family on a Friday night with pizza and popcorn and a 'Die Hard' movie on.
I felt like I was betraying my family. But I knew that trying to explain my emotions in a movie like this was more important than leaving them unspoken.
Westerns was why I got into the business. I grew up on a small farm in California and all I ever wanted to do was to play gangsters and cowboys in movies.
