Ultimately, it has been a struggle- but I was in Minneapolis and Austin a couple of weeks ago, sitting in theaters with complete strangers watching this weird movie that Kirk and I thought up and I was excited to be making film.
I started my career wanting to make a 'James Bond' movie, and I couldn't get hired! I made 'The Bourne Identity,' and ultimately the impact of that film was that it changed the 'James Bond' franchise.
When you make your first film, there is a hell of a lot to think about, and you've got to have a gut understanding of your material.
It's not scary to make a horror film because you get to pull back the curtain and see that none of it's real. When you're watching one, the terror bombards you.
If you wait until the right time to have a child you'll die childless, and I think film making is very much the same thing. You just have to take the plunge and just start shooting something even if it's bad.
The response to Pride has been so overwhelming. I mean, people have really loved it. And it's so rewarding because we had such a fun time making that film, and it was made with so much heart, that it's lovely that people seem to be responding in kind...
There are a lot of companies - not just Sony and Kodak - that have spent a lot of money trying to make the quality of the digital images comparable with film. But when you're sending these things over the Internet, they don't have to be high quality.
Instead of dumping all my money on an independent film that nobody would watch and most people would make fun of behind my back, I decided, 'I'm just going to buy a house.'
One could make money and get a career going with a low-budget horror film about killers attacking on holidays. It is always flattering to have somebody copy you.
The highest pay cheque my mother ever received funded the building of a nursery school in Shepherd's Bush - the school cost well over three times the money she donated to the making of the film 'The Palestinian.' Unsurprisingly this always goes unmen...
There's still a lot of investors wondering what to invest in. And, of course, I think entertainment looks attractive when you read the few films that make these insane amounts of money. What they don't know is they don't always do that.
I used the principles of Kickstarter to make 'She's Gotta Have It.' We filmed that in 1985 to 1986. The final cost was $175,000. I didn't have that money. It was friends, grants, donations. We saved our bottles for the nickel deposit.
Biographies are, in their nature, far more difficult to make into films than novels, because novels come with plots constructed and dialogue written, whereas I don't invent dialogue for my subjects or plot their lives for them.
Polaroid by its nature makes you frugal. You walk around with maybe two packs of film in your pocket. You have 20 shots, so each shot is a world.
When you're making a film, you become incredibly close. It's not like you're filing away papers all day. You're creating with human emotions, so you do become very connected, so it is familial and romantic.
I think that with piracy and tighter funds being around, people are realising that the game to play is to try and win people's respect with bold film making and then win a special place in people's collections, rather than just having the biggest ope...
While I was making my solo films, RKO was busily trying to get me and Fred Astaire back together. The studio wanted to capitalize on the success of 'Flying Down to Rio' and realized that the pairing of Rogers and Astaire had moneymaking potential.
I love filming in New York. I love New York movies, too. I just like it when people can take New York and make it their own, because there are so many different New Yorks.
With literary fiction, generally a film maker falls in love with a book. In commercial fiction, it's a producer or studio falling in love with a book they can make into a movie with worldwide appeal.
People miss those who they love. It brings tears to my eyes to see the longing for me. But it's my decision to do fewer films and more protagonist-based roles. For me to take up something, it has to make a lot of sense to me.
In terms of negotiating a career - I've always grown up being an insider and an outsider to different worlds, across different classes and cultures, so I have always naturally liked making films or music that puts things in unexpected places.
