I think that directing is the ultimate martyred task of filmmaking, that it has nobility to it. It takes three years to make a film, for the most part. I think it requires the attentiveness of a mother hen.
In the Woodstock movie, you see Justin, my son, who is now a filmmaker, being carried off by my wife at the time to the helicopter. He's just this little bundle of joy in her arms. And it's 1969.
I think filmmaking is a strange animal because it's anti-Democratic and collective at the same time, but I think it's all about not trying to know everything better than everybody else but making the right choices.
From a completely financial standpoint, digital is starting to crack as far as an independent filmmaker's access to getting your story out there - Amazon, iTunes, all of those. It makes the prospect of doing it yourself - not easy by any means - but ...
I think any filmmaker looks back and thinks, 'Boy, if we only had four hours more on that day when the sun was going down,' or, 'If we only spent more time and went back.'
Most independent filmmakers in Britain and North America work for commercial crews and then have their own projects when they've got enough money saved up to do so.
For a lot of filmmakers, their first goal is to be successful and make some money. But once people start doing that, the real goal is then to win an Academy Award. Because when they do, they know that their obit is going to start out, 'Academy Award ...
In Lithuania, I am known as a poet, and they don't care about my cinema. In Europe, they don't know my poetry; in Europe, I am a filmmaker. But here, in the United States, I am only a maverick!
Many filmmakers portray teenagers as immoral and ignorant, with pursuits that are pretty base... But I haven't found that to be the case. I listen to kids. I respect them... Some of them are as bright as any of the adults I've met.
Well it kind of is project to project because as a writer I think you always write to some degree about things that you know or things that happened - but my favourite filmmakers, my favourite movies of theirs tend to be the personal movies.
I've been involved with violent movies, and then I've also said at a certain point, 'I can't take it anymore. Please cut it.' You know, you've got to respect the filmmaker, and it's a really tough issue.
You can't work in the movies. Movies are all about lighting. Very few filmmakers will concentrate on the story. You get very little rehearsal time, so anything you do onscreen is a kind of speed painting.
In anything I've ever written, all the characters sound like me, which I don't think is a bad thing. It makes sense. But I had always admired filmmakers who made movies that didn't sound like them at all.
Just in the past few years - since I've been making movies, which isn't a very long time - you now have a culture that is fascinated and informed about the box office in a way that sometimes filmmakers weren't even.
My friend, the Dutch filmmaker Theo van Gogh, was murdered in 2004 for having been insufficiently reverent toward Islam.
We are here predominantly to support independent filmmakers and their needs. We are also here to assist people actually in their production, non-commercial people in their production.
From the very beginning, I've always just wanted to do something I've never done before. I'm still just trying to be on that path. It's all about working with filmmakers that you believe in.
There's a way in which filmmaking is a director's medium and television is a writer's medium, so even as TV gets more cinematic, it's still guided by the writer.
And I feel that filmmakers ought to be careful with the use of 3D. Because if you look back over the decades, you see that 3D has come and gone for I don't know how many years now.
When I was in college, my brother, B.R. Chopra, who is everything to me, was a director in Bombay. He taught me filmmaking. What I am today is because of him.
One of the most interesting aspects of the film project was collaborating with so many people - directors, filmmakers, and writers - over a five-year period. I learned that there are two components to this.
