Two-thirds of American movies are extensions of commercials -- they tell you how to feel and they tell you how to think -- rather than letting you figure it out on your own.
Alan Arkin'Catch-22' was a huge failure, and it rubbed off on everybody connected to it. I had a bunch of lean years where I had to do things, a lot of which I wasn't wildly enthusiastic about.
Alan ArkinI used to watch the world as if it was a performance and I would realize that certain things that people did moved me, and certain things didn't move me, and I tried to analyze, even at that age, six and seven and eight, why I was moved by certain things they did
Alan ArkinI don't believe there's anything in life you can't go back and fix. The ancient Vedas - the oldest Hindu philosophy - and modern science agree that time is an illusion. If that's true, there's no such thing as a past or a future - it's all one huge now. So what you fix now affects the past and the future.
Alan ArkinTV has taken reflection out of the human condition. People didn't use to have a ready answer for everything, whether they knew something about it or not. People think they have to have an answer for everything because the guys on TV have an answer for everything. But it's bullsh**t! Reflection is crucial.
Alan ArkinHollywood is a strange place. The class structure here is more rigid than almost anyplace I've ever experienced. It's made more difficult by the fact that it's constantly changing. You never know what class you belong to unless you're one of the two or three people that have been in the same echelon for a long, long time.
Alan Arkin