I discover what my film is by embarking on the journey of making it.
But films should be voyeuristic. What else is a film if you’re not snooping into somebody else’s lives?
I don't know what the character is going to be. We sit down and we create a character, and all of the characters in all of my films are made like that.
The reason my films work is because every actor on set is very secure. They're able to fly.
If I'm ever working on a set and anyone talks about a master shot, I say there is no master shot. Before I even went to film school, I learned about movies by being in a British feature film, where everything was shot master shot, mid-shot, close-up. But I reject the idea of a master shot. You don't shoot everything mechanically; you find imaginative ways that serve the action.
If a film or any piece of work doesn't entertain, it fails - and that is using the word entertain literally, meaning it holds you there and you become absorbed by it so that you don't walk away and get bored and so on.
Films are made all over the world all the time and only a thin slice of that product is Hollywood.
People have been very resistant to giving me more than the standard amount of money. So I keep making films on a similar scale. Which is fine, but also frustrating.
The problem with the British film industry is the nervousness and insecurity about - and genuflection toward - Los Angeles.
A lot of the reasons that I'm resistant to making films in the U.S. have nothing to do with not doing a film in Hollywood, but rather to do with what I'm committed to working on in the U.K. I feel very committed to the British film industry and infrastructure.
I'm developing the stuff all the time. There's a film in my head. I'm imagining a film.
I've walked out of films. But for every film I've ever walked out of, I've probably walked out of 500 plays.
You will find hardly any improvising on camera anywhere in my films. It's very structured, but it's all worked out from elaborate improvisations over a long period, as you know.
But actually I make films that I think are extremely sophisticated and cinematic.
