If New York is the Big Apple, tonight Hollywood is the Big Nipple.

I was seduced by the nouvelle vague, because it was really reinventing everything. And the Italian cinema that one would see in the theaters in the late '50s, early '60s was Italian comedy, Italian style, which, to me, was like the end of neo-realism. I think cinema all over the world was influenced by it, which was Italy finding its freedom at the end of fascism, the end of the Nazi invasion. It was a kind of incredible energy. Then, late '50s, early '60s, the neo-realism lost its great energy and became comedy.

I am still against any kind of censorship. It's a subject in my life that has been very important.

If you mention any ideological thing about shooting Last Tango in Paris, I was thinking I was doing a political film.

Having no children had been a kind of choice up to the moment when, from a choice, it became a sadness.

What I was talking about was, of course, very autobiographical - '68 was the moment when all the young people were incredibly excited, because when we were going to sleep, we knew we would wake up not tomorrow, but in the future. There was a sense of future that was the result of the mixture of politics, cinema, music, the first joints. And the movies were a very important part of that cocktail.

A monoculture is not only Hollywood, but Americans trying to export democracy.