I like the days when all the filmmakers had was a film roll, a camera and a gangster. The Mack Sennett comedies were all like that. They'd create little teams to go out and shoot films.
Actually, I met a lot of directors and most of them have that fantasy to make a silent movie because for directors it's the purest way to tell a story. It's about creating images that tell a story and you don't need dialogue for that.
If you try to make a silent movie with a normal script and you just pull out the dialogue, you will have big problems with the actors because you will ask them to tell a story that you don't know.
It's like, if I had the luxury of choice, and didn't have to worry about making a living, I would definitely want to get into whatever field it was that allowed me to push further and further comedically. Because that's the joy of it.
Definitely in the West, we're all cast as the same now. Whether you're Indian, Pakistani, Arab, Iranian, Afghan or whatever, you just get thrown into this category. And nine times out of 10, you're depicted as bad.
It's a shame that so many people are so intimidated and bothered by Tim Tebow's stance as a Christian. He's not bothering anybody. He's simply being who He is and giving all glory to His Lord.
Do you ever think about the fact that Jesus never said a mumbling word? You may have heard that phrase before, but how much have you ever thought about it?
I try not to repeat a story. I try not to repeat an emotion. I want it to be all sort of new for the viewers and to challenge myself as a writer, so there's always pressure. What else can you come up with?
The jokes I used to do on 'Sex and the City' were always comic character things, and they were rarely hard jokes. As soon as you go up in front of people, it demands laughter.
My films have become bilingual. When everyone saw 'Chennai Express,' they said it was a bilingual. But I am proud that 'Chennai Express' is the highest-grossing Hindi film down South.
Well, I wasn't just kind of standing in a queue at McDonald's and someone sat down and said, 'You're the director of a $100 million Hollywood movie.' I've been working in commercials for ten years.
You look back on films sometimes and if they have not been as all-out successful as you anticipated you try to find reasons why maybe it didn't come off for audiences as well as you would have liked.
It wasn't easy once I started running 20th Century Fox. There were a lot of eyebrows raised, and it wasn't easy, that transition, because, you know, I had big shoes to fill and I was very young, 27.
I guess I strongly feel that we cannot pretend that the Third World is not part of our world. We cannot say 'OK, there's that problem over there, let's just close our eyes' - we cannot do that.
I wouldn't give you two cents for all your fancy rules if behind them they didn't have a little bit of plain ordinary everyday kindness, and a little looking out for the other fellow, too.
When you think of the 'Exorcist,' you think of Linda Blair and pea soup and all this madness, but really if you look at the first half of that film, the stuff between her and Ellen Burstyn is so naturalistic and so real.
You know, why don't you take him off all this stuff you have him hopped up on, all this garbage that we're feeding him, all this sugar and caffeine, and then see what happens?
When I was younger, I wanted to own a circus and create this bizarre revue that went from town to town. I suppose, in a way, I got my wish because when you're working on a film, you're in a traveling circus.
I think that people who make films and think they're changing the world are sorely mistaken. If that really is your goal, there are far better ways to do it. I'm making politically observant films for audiences.
I just want to make films that have enough of a budget to pull off high-level imagery but also have a budget that is low enough that I can do what I want.
I don't want egos and personalities on the set that make it more difficult to make the film. I don't want people who take the focus away from the movie and the ideas behind the movie.
