When you're doing a film, people are always telling you exactly what to do. Literally, your own decisions are taken away from you.
I'd be lying if I said it wasn't fun to go to these nights out, like the opening of a film or something, but I dip in and out of it.
I have done some tacky films, but then they were all my decisions, and I'm happy to have made those because they have made me who I am.
The strange thing is that since I've been offered lots of films I think that maybe they think that I've sold out to Hollywood. Which is not the case if anybody's listening.
My soul is not my own any more. I cannot live like I want to. I am going to give up films.
I'm not interested in making a $60-million studio film with a bunch of 24-year-olds telling me what to do.
With the Ford Foundation grant all of a sudden instead of being an artist that had made a couple of short films, I became a filmmaker who dabbled in the arts.
Onstage or in films, you do affect peoples' lives, and sometimes that's very gratifying. But still, there's this little voice that says you should be doing something that matters.
And we had the perhaps unfair advantage of not having to worry about what an audience was gonna think. We were in a vacuum. We were making little short films, really.
I'm not saying that it's wrong to make huge Hollywood films but it's just a different kind of feeling, a different sort of pleasure.
As with instant replay, NFL Films' use of slow motion, camera angles and the narration of Facenda was not just a technical breakthrough but a conceptual breakthrough.
Many fear mistakes. In TV and films you just re-shoot the scene. In life do the same and just shoot a re-take.
I am a fan of the 'Rocky' films, and 'Rocky 4' is my favourite. I also like 'The Warriors.'
American films are terribly popular all over the world and American movie stars are terribly important. I don't know why.
Film is a medium of clear lines and broad strikes - which can be fantastic - but compared to the subtleties and nuances of a novel, it doesn't even get close.
All of us have our individual curses, something that we are uncomfortable with and something that we have to deal with, like me making horror films, perhaps.
The informing idea of what you want to say and do, that's what will take you from film school to professional - the idea. That's what is original to you.
My films are never about what Hong Kong is like, or anything approaching a realistic portrait, but what I think about Hong Kong and what I want it to be.
I'm not very aware of styles. We never talk about styles before we start shooting, or even during shooting, because I think the film will bring you there.
My study is a converted garage which is largely lined with bookshelves and cardboard boxes filled with manuscripts of my film scripts, plays and books.
'The Princess Bride' is by far the most popular film I've ever done. I don't think I'll ever top it.
