When I naturally write a story and I feel that the guy is sitting across the table from the girl and flirting with her... I think, 'God, that can't be me' because I'm just too old for that part. You need a 30-year-old or a 35-year-old for that part. And so I've given myself less and less roles.
You can't anticipate in the room the riches of what you encounter when you're location hunting for a movie.
When I was a young man, my friends and I and all of us in New York were very influenced by French cinema. French cinema played an enormous influence on those of us who wanted to be filmmakers.
Jazz is a big thing with me. It's a very big passion of mine, to play it. I'm an amateur musician and I love everything about it. I was obsessed with jazz when I was 15 years old and I know a lot about it because I've loved it so much.
The only thing that does change, to some degree, is [that] you have some life experiences, you suffer a certain amount and you incorporate that into your work. Not in the content of your work, but in the sensibility of your work. It's nothing that you try and do; it just happens. And if you're lucky, people buy tickets to see it, and if you're not lucky, [then] they don't like it. But that's all.
Paris is particularly beautiful in the rain. It was just a nice experience for me, a pleasant experience, and I was able to present it to the world through my eyes, very subjectively - not realistically, but subjectively.
I never considered myself an artist. I aspire to be an artist, but I never thought I had the depth or substance or gift to be an artist. I do think I have some talent, but it doesn't go as far as being an artist.
Once the movie's over, there's not much point. When the thing is edited, mixed, and color-corrected, and you've finished it... In my case, I never read anything about it, I never think about it.
As I got more confident, I was able to let actors improvise, and do long takes. It's 10%, 5% you learn and experience. The rest you just have or you don't have.
I can live in Paris for four months or London or, you know, Barcelona. These are places that are like New York. But I don't think I could live in many places. When I had to make a film in the United States I picked San Francisco because to me it's one of the great cities of America.
As the author you know how you want it to appear on screen and it's always the content dictating the form.
I'm really impotent against the overwhelming bleakness of the universe and the only thing I can do is my little gift [filmmaking] and do it the best I can, [...] which is cold comfort.
I write about what I want to write about, and so the film comes out as a very personal expression even if its subject matter is totally prefabricated.
The audience is making the film and not the film-maker.
I wouldn't necessarily want to be a big muscular guy. It's nice to be gorgeous whether you're male or female assuming you don't lose whatever else you have.
The Jewish culture - people that are Jewish have a certain cultural habit that they've formed and one of those habits is an appreciation of theater and music - these are cultural things one does associate with values that are promulgated by Jewish families. I think that's a good thing.
I was raised in a religious home. It was unreasonable enforced religion that turned me off it. It was a joyless, unpleasant, stupid, barbaric thing when I was a child and I've never gotten over that feeling. If you're talking about religion it's one thing; I don't hold Jewish religion with any more seriousness than I would any other.
I'll work by myself for years and then I'll think it'll be fun to et one of my friends like Marshall Brickman or Doug McGrath into a room and not be alone for the writing of the thing; to have the pleasure of taking walks and get lunch together; its sort of a fun process and then I do it and then I get back on my own for a while until I feel the need to do it again.
I don't think my film style has changed. I'm doing the same kind of jokes I did when I was younger.
No one ever wants the whole script. I give the whole script to people who require the whole script but to those people who don't require the whole script I don't give it to them and no one cares. They're relieved not to have to read extra pages that they're not in.
During the course of the year a number of ideas just come up automatically. I could be walking down the street. Or shaving. An idea will hit me and I'll write it down. Then, when I'm ready to write, I check my little matchbooks and napkins and find that it is good or it's pretty terrible. There are other times when I don't have any ideas and I'll go into a room and close the door and I sit and sweat it out for a day or a month and eventually I come up with [something].
If you pursue the other woman, it's a losing situation and it's not good for your relationship or your marriage. If your marriage is open and you're allowed to, that's no good either. There's no way, really in the end, to be happy unless you get very lucky.
I always feel, I guess being a product of the movies of the 40s where movies were the greatest things and screens were big and palaces were palaces and stars were larger than life that reality was so much inferior to what we felt was conceivably possible from what we had seen in the movies.
I don't like to reminisce much, and my walls don't have photographs of me and the actors I was with, or any of that stuff... I try and keep that disciplined, and just work. There are so many traps you can get into, and looking back on your own work is certainly one of them.
It has become harder and harder in the United States to make films unhampered by outside influences. I've always been able to steer clear of that and keep the business people out of my hair completely.
