When I first started acting in movies - as probably a lot of naive young actors do - I made a list of directors that I wanted to work with and sent it to my agent at the time.
I think I'm a very American director, but I probably should have been making movies somewhere around 1976. I never left the mainstream of American movies; the American mainstream left me.
Movies are a director's medium, and they end up getting less credit than actors. They get the flak if the movie doesn't do well, and the actor walks away with most of the credit if the film does well.
I'm a theatre person, that's who I am. I'm happy to make sojourns into the world of movies but I'm basically a theatre director that potters off and does a couple of movies.
I don't worry about what everyone wants to see. I make movies that please a writer, director and myself. I always think there are enough people smart as me and sensitive as me.
We did Holy Grail, and I got my name up there as one of the directors. After that, I started moving more and more down the line I wanted to, which was making movies.
[last lines] [Director's Cut] Gaff: [voiceover] It's too bad she won't live! But then again, who does?
You know, I became a director out of necessity. I was writing comedies, and I couldn't find anybody to deliver it correctly.
I am lucky, that is all. Lucky because there are a lot of people - producers, directors, people who buy tickets - who put confidence in me.
A director's dream? No, Bollywood reality in 1995.Business is booming, but cliché's are passée. A different sort of breeze-fresh, young-is unsettling fatigued conventions.
Many Mexican directors are scared to shoot in Mexico City, which is why there are many stories in Mexican cinema about little rural towns, or set a hundred years ago.
Clint Eastwood is an extraordinary director because he knows the value of a buck. He knows where it will show on the screen.
Is it 'left' to insist that presidents and CIA directors adhere to the law? I don't think so. I think it's American.
I had never thought of myself as a director and found out that I was not. I am a writer who was able to direct the films that I write.
I've been lucky to get some path-breaking films, which proved to be the turning point in my career. Be it 'Rock on!' 'The Last Lear' or 'Raajneeti,' directors started working in a different way.
I think acting really helps as a director. It's just no question, because you totally understand the acting process.
On the one hand, young theatre directors were coming to television theatre, because they wanted to get closer to the cinema, despite having studied and worked for the theatre.
For us, as actors, and even for the director, it gave us a sense of authenticity to what we were doing because we were talking about Hollywood and we were in Hollywood.
I do think that's so much a part of what being a director is - in working with actors - to really try and be sensitive to what each actor needs to get to where he wants to be.
There is a wonderful feeling of power when you're a director, but I don't think I need that, and I'm OK without it.
There's this weird thing about acting where you have to wait for somebody to ask you to do it; like you have to wait for a director to say it's okay.
