People have curiosity, they have intelligence, they have interest in understanding their peers. But producers and directors of cinema have decided that the seats in the theaters have been made to transform people's minds to lazy minds.

I do think that we are sometimes, as directors, guilty of portraying or asking our actors to behave in certain ways that are perhaps not very morally acceptable. I'm not the only one.

I often say to my students in workshops that if they are trying to find literary inspiration, they should not go and read novels, because novels are more appropriate for series. Where as they should read short stories - that's the right format for you to be able to actually display the narrative in a film.

You've noticed that same joke told by two different people, once works, and the other time doesn't, simply because how the person edits it. The silences, the pauses, what they neglect, what they emphasize - all of this matters.

There were years when Hitchcock was like a master to me, but now I think he's so artificial. I can watch films and say how technically beautiful they are, but I'm not impressed by any technicality.

Close-Up has affected later films that I've made.

I have somewhat lost my enthusiasm in the last years. Mainly because film students using digital video these days have not really produced anything which is more than superficial or simplistic; so I have my doubts.