The first must that any director has is to not force his public.
We're talking a very cultivated people, but I found as cultivated as they were, they were uninformed about the personages who weren't American. They knew everything about America, but much less about other countries.
As Claude LeLouche said, his favorite American director is Sergio Leone. Not because I would be American, but because I was dealing with subject matter that an American could have just as easily dealt with.
I've tried to consider stories that I have read, making them into films, but they would turn out unnatural. If a producer wants that, he should call other people. Not me.
I think that men of my generation - not me in particular - are among the most fortunate men in the universe.
The very fact of seeking specialization is probably what makes America so great in these two hundred years. But also, the sensation that somebody who wants to understand America doesn't really need to visit it much.
It is clear that the vehicle of the western was a very interesting vehicle for me to contraband some of my ideas.
I think even in American schools, they must be studying in a specialized manner.
I don't want to do a war film per se. Nor do I want to do a political film.
I realized than an author cannot also be a producer.
There's my pessimism. Because I didn't know yet that type of film is always going to become more extinct, that there won't be anymore. Because there will always be more films that win five Oscars like Terms of Endearment.
I've always had the sensation that people in America are always avant-garde. Very attentive to all the new innovations. But it's very specialized.
The Jesuits use this kind of training, or, let's say it this way: The Jesuit General imposes this kind of structure; he encourages the young men to specialize. Because getting ten of them together, you have the best of everything. But this does not mean that this system is good for the Jesuits all over. They're all available to the cause.
Charlie Chaplin, too, through spectacle, contraband certain ideas, put them through, ideas that even today are not being expressed by great statesmen and politicians.
I've shot films in Africa. I've shot in America - English is not my language.
If a director takes the time to document - to step back to observe - I think it I more honest. Because it has to be the public that makes the conclusions and who, possibly, resolves the situation.
I think politics should be expressed in this way and not in other ways. And not just politics - sentiments, even certain states of being.
Whoever would like to look and see what someone is saying behind all the show, glitter, scenery, whatever it may be, and see what ideas are being expressed beyond and below and above that, can do that, as well.
