But, unfortunately, sometimes that affirmation creates a sense that you deserve special treatment and recognition in areas where you're not so talented.
This devil loves mankind because men are going to always make the choice that will send him into ascendancy. He's been winning the game for a long time.
It was the era of Tab Hunter and Rock Hudson; they all had a certain look.
As a filmmaker, "no" is not in my vocabulary. I've got to figure out a way.
Music has always been an important thing to me in my life and understand I've worked in the music business.
I really believe you can predict when someone has a great attitude, a real well of talent.
Show business is one of those things that people can use to get themselves out of the lower rung of society.
The score is always the wonderful icing. The score tells you the emotional content of the film. What the characters don't say, the music can say.
It's very clearly stated in the film: You make your own choices, and what you're always fighting is ego.
Ray Charles, in his own way, it's like at the beginning, Ray Charles changed American music, not once but twice.
The SAS is the most elite of the special forces in the world. They are not people who go out and advertise; they keep it inside. They don't want anybody to know about them.
I feel very comfortable shooting music, and I think you can see that.
But a writer's contribution is literary and a film is not literary. When you take that stuff off the page, and cast the people who are going to fit into those roles, that's what being a director is.
An actor has to embody a role.
Because when you have millions of people with this kind of need for gratification, and the culture is saying that it's possible for everyone to satisfy all of their needs and desires all of the time, there are obviously going to be clashes - clashes of ego.
But the process of making a film is not glamorous. Certainly not my films.
My creative partner is a writer, and he's got an executive producing credit on this film. We've made three films together and I would never underestimate the impact of a writer.
Look at Walter Huston in The Devil and Daniel Webster: It's an incredible performance.
I also know what looks good before the camera, how to move the camera, and how to get a story on the screen.
Russell Crowe is very difficult, but it's worth it. He's the real thing. I can tell you this. Russell Crowe was just as difficult before he was an international star as he was afterwards.
I love actors and I understand what has to happen within a scene. Any scene is an acting scene and actors never act alone, so there has to be an interchange. If it's a dialog scene, if it's a love scene, it doesn't matter because you need to establish a situation.
If people are worried about the size of their trailers, I kind of say their priorities are off.
It's much easier to work with an unknown.
It isn't glamorous until after the film is finished, and you are at the premiere and getting your picture on the cover of magazines.
When Ray Charles is concentrating he's like a piece of granite, nothing twitches, nothing, ... He sat for 25 minutes solid like that, like a stone, and I thought, 'Oh my God, if he doesn't like it I'm dead.' ... And then finally, after 25 minutes he started to talk back to the screen. I heard him say 'That's right. That's the truth.' .
