I think there's an instinct to make grotesque horror films that are purely carnal, like the 'Saw' movies.
I think more than writers, the major influences on me have been European movies, jazz, and Abstract Expressionism.
I never stopped studying Buddhism. In the past few years, in between movies, I do a retreat.
I am so happy because I want more people to like martial arts movie not just martial arts audience. Even martial arts can be used in comedy, in drama, in horror movies, in different kinds of movies.
Coming Home had been made before and Apocalypse Now and Deer Hunter, different kinds of movies.
Part of the reason why movie bosses are so obsessed with crime movies is because they know that world and the criminals. And that's what they are - they would not hesitate to act illegally to achieve profit and gain.
One of the joys of going to the movies was that it was trashy, and we should never lose that.
As a kid, I liked the 'Halloween' movies and 'Nightmare On Elm Street' and all that kind of stuff. But as an adult, I really don't watch much horror, to be honest.
I'm a big kid, I'm a kid at heart, so I still love the classic family films, such as the great Warner Bros film 'Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory' - not the remake, but the original. It's still one of the best movies, hands down, ever made, and of course that goes back to the ingenuity of the characters and the storyline.
I wanted to escape Small Town U.S.A. To dismiss the boundaries, to explore. My life experience came from watching movies, TV, and reading books and magazines. When your culture comes from watching TV everyday, you're bombarded with images of things that seem cool, places that seem interesting, people who have jobs and careers and opportunities.
I'm a person who likes these sort of movies... sad but moving 'art movies' that normally are at a festival and then they go to a small art house theater and disappear.
In theater or movies you see either 'I'm religious' or 'I'm an atheist.' I've never seen too much discussion of 'I believe there's a higher power but I'm hesitant to reach out to him because I don't know if I'm worthy of his attention.'
I've never been interested in action movies. Definitely not interested in sci-fi.
And the VCR did the same thing: the movie industry thought nobody would ever watch movies any more.
I'm a spoilt brat. I thought I was just going to walk in and make movies. But I'd been my own boss for so long that all of a sudden to be facing a roomful of people who were niggling over every little scene... I just thought I'd go back and draw my comics and have a happy life.
I grew up on the crime stuff. Spillane, Chandler, Jim Thompson, and noir movies like Fuller, Orson Welles, Fritz Lang. When I first showed up in New York to write comics back in the late 1970s, I came with a bunch of crime stories but everybody just wanted men in tights.
In some movies you feel like you're a very small part of a huge machine. Whereas in the theater you can have a very small part, but you can still feel the weight and the gravity of it. Given the nature of theater, it's a more concentrated and quiet experience.
I don't know if I see myself as really an action hero, but I like doing physical movies and I like doing movies where the writing is very lean.
If I have to produce movies, direct movies, whatever to change the way Hollywood treats older women, I'll do it. If I have to bend the rules, I will. If I have to break them, I will.
So, yes, there's nothing I love more than listening to directors talk about their movies.
With actors like Steve McQueen, Paul Newman and Harrison Ford, what made them such icons is that even in dramatic movies, their characters had a sense of humor.
The movies I made when I was 14 or 15, I have a hard time looking at those. Those were the awkward years. I don't know if anybody can look at something they did when they were 14 and not wince.
Movies will end up being this esoteric art form, where only singular people will put films out in a small group of theaters.
When I was a kid, I had two great guilty pleasures. One was horror movies and the other was martial arts movies.
The thing that's protected me creatively is that the movies have made profits.
I do other sorts of things. I act in other people's movies. I direct operas. I write books.
American movies are often very good at mining those great underlying myths that make films robustly travel across class, age, gender, culture.
The first two movies I directed failed, when I was 21 and 23, and that was the greatest thing that could have happened.
All studio movies are the middle of the Bell curve. The only way to do something is to do it yourself. And the only way to do that is to not take any money from anyone or take as little money as possible from anyone and that's it.
Hollywood and the recording industry argue that current law permits the copying of songs and movies, and sharing them on the Internet. This enables young people to grow up learning how to steal.
Well, the thing about great fictional characters from literature, and the reason that they're constantly turned into characters in movies, is that they completely speak to what makes people human.
I didn't know this about myself, but when 'Pirates of the Caribbean' came out I realised that I didn't enjoy a huge amount of recognition. I didn't react to it well, but I think life is about finding out who you are and what you like. So I started doing independent movies and art-house films instead.
I use to watch like maybe three or four movies, five days out of the week. I was a movie buff, but I really didn't know what it was like behind the scenes, or the whole political process of it.
Man, I love the 'Lord of the Rings' movies. Some people would say I'm weird for liking those types of movies, but they are so cool.
I want to work with great directors. I want to work on good material with good actors. I've probably done 20 movies at this point and a lot of independents. It's been an incredible ride and I love it and I'm just going to keep going and doing what I'm doing.