I've had a very productive life. I've worked very hard, I've never fallen prey to depression. I'm not sure I could have done all of that without being in psychoanalysis.
The audience goes to sleep really quickly! If you have a slight pause at the wrong time, that's it!
I think, on both sides of the camera or the novel: Distraction. I'm obsessed with: Can I get this actress or my third act to work? I'm distracted. I'm interested in that so I don't sit home and think, "Gee, life is meaningless. We're all going to die. The universe is pulling apart at breakneck speed."
There are drawbacks in being famous too, but you can live with those. They're not life-threatening. If the paparazzi are outside your restaurant or your house - and actors make such a big thing of it and scurry into cars and drape things - you think they're going to be crucified or something. It's not a big deal. You can get used to that. It's not so terrible.
I have a number of symptoms that are neurotic and are constricting in the sense that if I had a brilliant idea for a film that had to be shot in Tulsa, OK I would tear it up and throw it away. Anything outside of New York, 'cause I can't exist in a hotel outside of my own home, I have to be in my own home and my own environment. This is a neurotic symptom that is constricting to my work even.
I keep getting more and more ambitious. Over the years, to some degree, in some areas, I feel I've grown. In some areas, I made a fool of myself. In some areas, I think I can still do some funny things.
Throughout history in the theater and film people do like sarcastic characters, and they do like curmudgeons - if they're amusing, they do like them despite the fact that they're vitriolic, particularly if they're for the right thing. If you can see that the person is a decent person and is for the right thing, and is not just a nasty person with base motives, but someone who is a decent human but expresses himself.
None of the arts are any good unless you really are great at them.
I have a limitless amount of great music at my disposal and it's very, very pleasurable because when the music goes on the film it's amazing how much it livens up the film and gives it an emotional kick in the pants, sort of.
You are much more dependent on luck than you think. People say if you want to have a good relationship, you have to work at it. But you never hear it about anything you really like, about sailing or going to soccer games.
Comedians have a tendency to have a limited range, they tend to do one thing and do it very well, but it's limited.
I never knew what Amazon was. I've never seen any of those series, even on cable. I've never seen The Sopranos, or Mad Men. I'm out every night and when I come home, I watch the end of the baseball or basketball game, and there's Charlie Rose and I go to sleep.
I can do a limited amount of things and that's what I do and I feel comfortable doing it and I have no particular desire to do anything else as an actor.
I think Hollywood has gone in a disastrous path. It's terrible. The years of cinema that were great were the '30s, '40s, not so much the '50s...but then the foreign films took over and it was a great age of cinema as American directors were influenced by them and that fueled the '50s and '60s and '70s.
Paris is a very exciting city. I learned about Paris the same way that Americans do: from the movies.
Everyone wants to get out of living where they're living now, because life is a pretty tough proposition and not much fun. But when you think back to earlier times, you only extrapolate the nice things.
I'm in show business. I'm not like a poor factory worker who'd been laid off.
I can understand that an audience, buying a ticket to see a picture of mine, wants to see something funny because they feel confident that at least I have a fighting chance to make a funny film when I make a film, whereas if I make a dramatic film there's one chance in a thousand that it's really going to come out great, so I understand how they feel about that and they're completely right.
I've been lucky because my films have consistently made a profit, almost all of them have made a profit. Never a huge profit, but nobody gets hurt. And therefore I get a lot of freedom.
In real life I'm not the character I play in my films. I'm reasonably competent, I work very hard, I'm disciplined, I lead a very middle class life. I work in the mornings, I have lunch, I practise my clarinet, I go to the movies, I eat out in restaurants or watch ball games on television or at the ball games.
I always write the same way. I always write with a yellow pad and a ballpoint pen on my bed. And then I go and type it up afterwards. I've always done that. Those things become habitual.
I always feel the cynicism is reality with maybe an alternate spelling or something because I feel that I have real perspective on this particular issue of punishment in society.
A general philosophy of the female characters in my films is they all want something to believe in, and not having anything.
I feel humor is important for those two reasons: that it is a little bit of refreshment like music, and that women have told me over the years that it is very, very important to them.
I like filming in New York a lot myself, but London is accommodating to me; the weather's very good there and the conditions for shooting and the financial conditions, the artistic conditions are good, so it's a pleasant place to shoot.
