The greatest directors are the greatest users. They use people's talents to tell the story that they want to tell.
It's great to be recognized for work, and the work is great, but once you have the awards, it becomes less important. It just gives you the ability to do better work, in my opinion.
You can't really micro-manage. You'll never make the movie in 52 days, if you micro-manage. If you do that, you take the creativity away from people because people just really quickly become disinterested when they're always being told how to do it.
[Spielberg] surrounds himself with great crew members who are at the top of their game and know their stuff. He motivates us by liking what we do, and he doesn't get paralyzed by the process or by new ideas. He embraces them and uses them.
These days, you'd probably shoot it in the daylight and manipulate it in the post. That's [how] most people would do it. [I did the same thing with] with 'Diving Bell and the Butterfly'. No CGI. It's all live photography. And I like that, it's very challenging and exciting to be able to do that.
Very few people make exterior movies anymore. It's always action films driven by action and quick editing.
There are films that are difficult. There are films that would actually affect your personal life because of the length of the production, how long [you're away] from the family.
If you take away 'Schindler's List' and 'Saving Private Ryan', I like 'Minority Report' a lot.
I do like 'Munich'.It's a really wonderful film. I mean, there's 'Schindler's List', there's 'Saving Private Ryan'. But 'Munich' - of all the other films, Munich would be the one that's really, really amazing storytelling.
["War Horse"] does have action as well, but we allow the audience to appreciate the environment where these characters are from because the lens shapes the people, as we know.
Occasionally I do movies with other directors. I did 'The Diving Bell and the Butterfly' for Julian Schnabel. I did a movie with Jim Brooks ('How Do You Know'). I did a movie with Judd Apatow ('Funny People'). So I do get a chance to work with other people, which is always enjoyable, always pleasant. But still, Steven [Spielberg] makes the types of movies that I'm interested in as well.
[I] love 'Munich', man. That's a very underappreciated film.
It would be horrible to be micro-managed! I don't think directors can really micro-manage people. It's just impossible.
I like the ending of the movie [War Horse], simply because it's such a demanding scene emotionally, and yet [the look] is all done on camera. I like the work not to be manipulated digitally. And it's all done on camera [in that scene].
I had very little involvement with 'TinTin'. Very little involvement. So I can't really elaborate on that either.
We exchanged a couple of ideas and stuff like that, but that's about it. I just think ... consulting on 'Tintin' was very interesting because you try to ... not educate, but inform the animators [about] what the lighting looks like, but [in the end] they do it themselves. I don't actually go and sit there with them. [We] just had a couple of conversations.
It's very hard to go to Monument Valley and not think of John Ford's films.
[Steven Spielberg makes] human movies. Movies [...] that reflect the life we wish it would be, not necessarily as it is. And the happy ending, you know. Life is a tough thing to begin with, and I like the happy ending.
['American Dream' will be released] probably never.Never in the United States because there's no room for independent cinema.
Really fantastic film, 'Munich'. So yeah, if I would say, what's the most underappreciated film, I think 'Munich' would be the one.
[There, in War Horse] very little CGI. What happened there - because the horse was running very close to the trench, we had a rider. So in few instances, we had a rider dressed in a green suit. The rider would guide the horse through the frame, and through CGI [we removed] the rider. But that's about it.
'Sugarland Express' was pretty amazing.
'American Dream' is a small little movie made for under a million dollars. Totally independent feature.
I just directed another picture called 'American Dream' with Nick Stahl. Just finished shooting principal photography right before I started ['Lincoln'].
[ 'American Dream' ] probably will [go] somewhere in Europe. You get 3000 entries [to] Sundance, and how many movies get [screened]? So, I'm a realist. I'm very much realistic in terms of if this movie will be released in the States. Probably not.
