I wanted to make a film about stupid people that was very vulgar and deeply stupid. From that moment on I can hardly be reproached for making a film that is about stupid people.
We have new tools that can give the audience a sense of not only being there, which is the key element in an IMAX film, but also seeing things in a way that they won't see on television or in feature films.
As an audience member, if I go to a film, and I am watching two actors, and they're kissing, and it looks like they don't even want to be kissing, it just takes me out of the film.
I just remember when I came out of film school - and I loved film school - that the industry was such a mystery. How to break in, and once you are in, how to make a film; that is such a large undertaking. There are thousands of pitfalls.
I grew up with white parents, and until after college, it was a lot of confusion, especially because I grew up in an all-white area. So I never looked around and saw anyone who looked like me.
I think over the course of 14 films, I'm returning to a place that I know to tell a story... the same way Spielberg returned to fantasy, Lucas returned to the 'Star Wars' saga, or John Ford returned to the western.
When I was around eight, I learned how to touch-type at school, and I received a computer as a present. I started writing plays, and for many years I thought I would be a playwright.
I think you can do a lot, like describing people with their physical characteristics, things like that, but to me, I've always found it to be a much more informative question to ask somebody what they read.
When I was in my twenties and broke, I'd buy books before food. A meal will sustain you for a few hours, a good book will sustain you for life.
I know he's a good person. And he said he was sorry. And I love him. And when you love a person, you have to forgive him sometimes.
I went to school with a guy named Truxton. He and I played football together, and he knocked me out once because he's bigger and strong than I am.
I can't picture in my mind three hundred and sixty thousand dollars... When I think of it, all I can see in my mind is a big nickel.
Thus, from admiration of one wise and innocent child, and from a misheard remark, the process that not even Aristotle could codify was triggered. Where do you get your ideas? I purposely mishear things.
Eyes is the attempt to tell the story of the Civil Rights movement and to create an emotional, intellectual constituency. But what do you do after that? The black community doesn't have institutions that pick up such moments and preserve them.
What drives people to public service is a sense of possibility. If you haven't sensed that possibility you don't get started in the same way, you don't feel you can have an impact.
When I was a kid, I loved Nicholas brothers films. It was like skateboarding. Even Gene Kelly: I always preferred him to Fred Astaire, just because he was more athletic, like skateboarding.
Ever since I was little, I would just make stories up in my mind. It was based on people I saw in the street or someone I would talk to, or I would hear a specific voice.
Here's the thing that people don't understand: I don't really care. I've never been a careerist. It's not a strategy. I react to certain characters and story lines and specific mode of filmmaking.
When I'm directing films, I mostly try to create an environment on set that mimics what's in my mind as to the tone and feel of things. I try to create a place where you feel that anything's possible.
If Wagner lived today, he would probably work with film instead of music. He already knew back then that the Great Art Form would include a sort of fourth dimension; it was really film he was talking about.
I came down to the living room one day and my wife was standing in the living room. It wasn't an illusion. I saw her out of the corner of my eye. The moment I saw her, she vanished.
