The only times you'll see me in terms of the movie business is when I have to go to the premieres of my own movies. I don't go to see ones that aren't mine because I don't even like going to mine.
I always say if you're going to do a movie about Charles de Gaulle get a Frenchman, you know. I'm not French. And yeah, sure I could get with a dialect coach and work for six months trying to talk like a Frenchman. But there's some French actors. Just get one of them, you know.
Directing takes a good chunk of your life out. It's a very hard thing. As an actor, you go in for a couple of months and do your job, and then you move onto another one. As a director, it's with you for quite some time and you're responsible for the entire thing, whether the results are good or bad, or whether people throw darts at you or put you on a pedestal.
I mean the most important thing you can have as an actor, writer, director, or whatever you are, poet or whatever it is, is life experience. Life experience doesn't mean you have to live 50 years to have it. I mean you know a lot of people have huge life experience by the time they're in college.
I actually am a phobic twitchy sort of nervous guy.
When you're a director, for two years or at least a year and a half, that's what your life is. So if you're gonna do it, you gotta be ready to do it and it has to be something you care about. I've found something that I do care about.
If you've written it you know exactly; whoever you're playing if you've written it you already know it. As a matter of fact, you've already made the movie if you wrote it. You've made it in your head.
If you want anybody to have a different voice, you really have to visualize and hear the voices of all these people. Sometimes when I write with specific actors in mind, it helps.
It's not that I don't understand it. But people think if you speak with an English accent it somehow makes you smarter.
Well I loved Little League; so all the memories are pretty fond but I broke my thumb. That wasn't a lot of fun. I think probably the first time I pitched [I started out as a first baseman] and the first game I pitched in Little League, I struck out 10 batters. I had a curve ball a little early [laughs]. You're not really supposed to have one when you're 12, but I did, so I first game I struck out 10 batters. That's possibly my fondest memory.
Just the other day, my assistant was on the line with Calvin Klein. Golly, I usually shop at Sears.
Every couple I know has side-by-side grave plots, but when we do it we're the biggest weirdos on the block.
I quit flying years ago. I don't want to die with tourists.
I’m not much of a drinker, so I’m going to eat seven pounds of pork.
Movies these days have made killers into funny people. What's that all about? I've got kids and family and friends, and I don't like bad things. I don't think they're funny, and it's irresponsible to make movies that don't show you how that's not good.
Man, I was drowning in sadness. And Angelina, she lifted me right up out of there.
When people wear shoes that don't fit them, it says something about their soul. Generally, I think it means they are good people.
