Even if we die at 100, we're still dying young. I want at least 700 years. There's a lot of travelling and books to read and movies to see. I'm not going to squeeze it all in in 85 years.

Comedy is a wonderful device for distance that allows us to look at what we're talking about with some degree of distance and hopefully with a bit more perspective and honesty. With many exceptions, a movie with no jokes is far less appealing to me.

A book suggests a whole world and story that I could have never thought of in a million years.

I like action films, not exclusively, but I like Samurai films. I like Westerns. Not so much war pictures, but a few. I like kinetic cinema.

I want all of my films to belong to me.

Were "A Clockwork Orange" or "Blue Velvet" released today, would they have the same power to shock that they had when they came out? Are we too inured by that torrent of images and the ridiculousness of modern political life, so that nothing shocks us anymore? What does it take to shock someone today - or at least jolt them? I don't have an answer. I'm just asking the question.

The actors are the greatest executors of tone in a film. They're the most important cinematic component.