Joe E. Lewis said, 'Money doesn't buy happiness but it calms the nerves.' And that is how I feel about a film being well-received.

I want studios to be financing director-driven, auteurist cinema, as they did in the '70s. I think it's starting to happen now. Plus, because of how our world has changed politically, I think audiences are demanding more realism. We need to have more stuff in our culture about what is really going on right now.

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

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

A pitfall of making a comedy with a studio-and it's also an American cultural thing-is that I get tired of being encouraged to go always for laughs.

As the years go by and I make more films, I am increasingly interested in capturing place as a vivid backdrop for my films.

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