When the producers of 'Why Poverty?' came to me to do a film about poverty in the United States, I asked if I could do a film about wealth instead. I tend to make films about perpetrators, rather than victims.
I believe in manicures. I believe in overdressing. I believe in primping at leisure and wearing lipstick. I believe in pink. I believe happy girls are the prettiest girls. I believe that tomorrow is another day, and... I believe in miracles.
I have to be alone very often. I'd be quite happy if I spent from Saturday night until Monday morning alone in my apartment. That's how I refuel." ( , LIFE Magazine, December 7, 1953)
What I think is interesting is that the more you do, you have to invent a book of rules of what you can do and what you can't do. And the very real danger is that if your book of rules becomes a book of cliches.
I have to be entertained by what I'm writing, so a lot of my stuff has a goofiness or scatological quality. If these characters can entertain me, then I feel like I can deal with the darker or more serious stuff.
When female stories are muted, we are teaching our kids that their dignity is second class and the historical accounts of their lives [are] less relevant. This lowered value carries over when women face sexual objectification and systemic brutalizati...
Everything has to be clean and orderly when I sit down to write. I have candles going, and small objects that remind me of what I am working on, or bring me into the world of the character.
A priest once quoted to me the Roman saying that a religion is dead when the priests laugh at each other across the altar. I always laugh at the altar, be it Christian, Hindu, or Buddhist, because real religion is the transformation of anxiety into l...
It was actually Peter's idea that I should make the film. He called me in the very beginning, and I hadn't even read the book. So I read it and I liked it very much and I knew I'd certainly like to do it.
The big difference is the size of the crew and the flexibility of shooting because of the size. I mean, it's crazy. So you can't improvise, you cannot suddenly do something that comes to mind, whereas in a small production you have much more flexibil...
The Roman Empire was very, very much like us. They lost their moral core, their sense of values in terms of who they were. And after all of those things converged together, they just went right down the tubes very quickly.
When I was in New York it was like a maze, a rat maze, going from one little box to another little box and passing through passageways to get from one safe haven to another.
I got to thinking about the Book of Revelation that was written by a Jewish prophet who was also a follower of Jesus who hated the Roman Empire. I realized that the Book of Revelation could be a way to reflect on the issue of religion's relationship ...
What I got, unconsciously, from admiring Fred Astaire was that he didn't want what he was doing to look difficult. What was difficult, in my opinion, was making it look so genuine, so effortless. I equally have tried to remain unseen on the screen.
People always say to me, 'You have such a clearly defined sense of style,' and when I hear it, I get crazed, because what I hear - and I know they mean it as a compliment - is that I have such a narrow vision that I can't get out of it.
Every now and then I have to teach directing. The thing about the theatre is that the most important thing you can do as a director is to make sure that everybody is in the same world - you have to create the world and make sure everyone buys into it...
I've never been to Hollywood. I can count the number of times I've been to Los Angeles on my hands. I've never made a movie there and I've never been there for working reasons. The only reason to go there is for silly awards shows.
So I think that life is sort of like a drumbeat. It has a rhythm and sometimes it’s fast and sometimes it’s slower, and maybe what’s happening is this drumbeat is just accelerating and it’s gotten to the point where I can’t hear between the...
That would be getting up at 5 am... I don't understand why film's shoot such brutal hours. I think it'd be worth it to not be so strictly cost-effective and have an 8 hour day. The film's would benefit in the end.
The things I want to make into a film, they're personal, esoteric things, and I don't expect anyone else to like them as much as I do. I generally like my films more than anybody else will.
Chicago always hit me as such a gloomy place - I just remember all the snow getting dirty as soon as it would fall, all the decaying brown brick buildings around where we lived, all this soot all over the place.
