I would have been very happy just working from job to job, paying my rent one movie at a time. I never wanted to be this famous. I never imagined this life for myself.
But to this day I am convinced that the real reason we met was because Alexander is from Nebraska, and he was completely fascinated that I was about to go off and make a movie with Brando - perhaps the most famous Nebraskan of all.
I'm world famous, everywhere I go there are people who love me because of I've been able to bring them some joy from the movies I've made.
The scariest thing in my life is the first morning of production on all my movies. It's the fear of failing, the loss of face, and a sense of guilt that everybody puts their faith in you and not coming through.
I think in the future we might see things arrive the way Prince announces a concert where a few days before the show he announces it and tickets just go up. You might see that with movies and other things.
You never know how things will last, if they will last, and how people will use them in the future. It was a fun movie for young people at the time in the 80s; but it struck a cord with people and it has lasted so I'm very proud of being a part of th...
Another random thing I do is the search for extraterrestrial intelligence, or SETI. And you may be familiar with the movie 'Contact,' which sort of popularized that. It turns out there are real people who go out and search for extraterrestrials in a ...
There's so much craziness that comes along with being a movie star that you can get so confused. Unless you've spent your whole life waiting to be the centre of attention, it's pretty terrifying.
I've had some painful experiences in my life, but I feel like I'm trivializing them by using them for a scene in a movie. I don't want to do that. It just makes me feel kind of dirty for having done that.
When you do one movie at a time, if one goes crazy and becomes successful, your life changes. But you can step back and catch your breath.
I began with small roles in successful movies like 'No Country For Old Men' by the Coen brothers; but it was 'The Last Exorcism' that changed my life: with what I earned, I left Texas and moved to Los Angeles.
'Bagdad Cafe' was a film that changed many, many people's lives... how they saw themselves and how they looked at their life situation. I thought I made a little movie. All the mail that I get is about how it changed lives, and that's wonderful.
So many of our enormous emotional crises are lived through the media. They're lived through movies; they're lived through what we watch on television - they're not actual events in our life.
The movies I've made at a certain time of my life were exactly right for the stage of my life, the frame of mind I was in at the time. Each character I've had to play has been me in that time in my life.
I just don't want to make the same old movies. I'm not interested in it. Directing's hard. It takes up a lot of your life, and I'm not that interested in making the same old film.
I think action movies bring more excitement than tears, but I always want to take it to another level. I mean, I think if one appreciates anything in life to a certain degree, it could possibly bring tears to your eyes.
I can't comment on any outside perception. I'm happy to come out and talk about movies that I've worked on in a setting like this. Otherwise, I have my own life that I live which is very different and private.
The movies that I love and model after, like 'Annie Hall,' 'When Harry Met Sally,' and in particular for me, 'Broadcast News,' are the tone of life, which isn't a setup punch-line every two minutes.
'Hairspray' was a movie turned Broadway musical turned Hollywood remake, and that is the 'Lion King' circle of life as we know it in Times Square, the creative loop that swings for the stars and sometimes crashes into the upper deck.
I've been to two festivals in my life, and I've never been to Toronto. I haven't really been making festival movies. This is new territory for me.
I'm proud of all the movies I've made. They're not sequels, they're not franchises. And the reason I pick my films carefully is that I don't want to spit on my life. I like to think of myself as more than that.
