I've always approached screenplays and so forth with, "How would it really happen?" Not "What's the movie version?" but "What's the real-life version?" Then I just follow my nose.

I don't feel despair because I am able to make the films I want to make, and that gives me hope.

If you're not making epic, archetypal films on some level, I think you're wasting a great potential of cinema.

I mean, look, I love movies, not just the ones I make... In fact, I don't like the movies I make very much.

I think that Peter Jennings is the only decent one of the big three.

The better a novel is, in literary terms, the more you can't be faithful. The novel succeeds on terms exclusive to literature. A good film succeeds on terms exclusive to the cinema. That's why so many bad novels can become good movies.

Cinema really lends itself well to big, archetypal stories, you know, classic old stories and you need kind of a weird, big terrain like the Japanese plains for Samurai movies or the West. You need that for these giants to walk around.