A director shouldn't get in the way of the movie, the story should.
Visual storytelling of one kind or another has been around since cavemen were drawing on the walls.
If you're going to succeed, you've got to be like one of those punch-drunk fighters in the old Warner Bros. boxing pictures: too stupid to fall down, you just keep slugging and stay on your feet.
I think a story should take as long to tell as it is appropriate to that particular story.
The human race is fundamentally insane. If you put two of us into a room together we're soon gonna start figuring out good reasons to kill one another.
The amazing thing about any movie is not whether it's good, but that it got made at all.
I'm still learning. It's all a learning curve. Every time you sit down, with any given episode of any given show, it is a learning curve. You're learning something new about how to tell a story. But then, I've felt that way about everything I've ever done - television, features or whatever. Directing or writing, it always feels like the first day of school to me.
I just tell you what a pleasure it is to get back to the kind of filmmaking I used to be allowed to do.
Some of us have great original ideas and some of us depend on adaptations.
I spent 20 years of my career primarily being a writer for hire.
I think once you've finished a movie you really have to detach from it so that you can come back and watch it as an audience member.
The Exorcist' is amazing because it recognizes that silences can be as powerful as sound effects.
The only person who can, with impunity, make the movie he wants to make, has got to be Steven Spielberg.
I'd like to think that my films are personal enough to exist without hearkening back to their respective novels.
Boy, I'd hate to shoot on tape or disc or whatever the hell they're talking about. I love film.
To me, length is an artificial and arbitrary factor in a film.
One of my favorite movies of all time is 'It's A Wonderful Life', which is a pretty interesting choice for a seasonal Christmas favorite, because it's about a guy who wants to commit suicide and is presented with reasons not to.
I've never been a big fan of the music-video style of editing movies that crept in the last few decades. I like stuff that's able to take its time.
I am fascinated with times past.
Stanley Kubrick was a big inspiration. People accuse me of never using my own material. But when did Kubrick? You look at his films and they are completely unique... completely separate entities.
