You have to strike hard from the beginning and create a depressurizing zone between the viewer's own life and the one onscreen. The creators of James Bond got it right: the attention-grabbing scene of each Bond movie is the very first one, before the opening credits.

I decided that one day I had to make a film where the viewer couldn't possibly guess the end.

It's funny: half my films were flops, half did well. It would be terrible if I'd had only success.

I sometimes follow people who attract my curiosity in the street for five, ten minutes.

I see a film as a puzzle, with a beginning, middle, and end, but I like to start at the end sometimes.

People are too pretentious in France to like Sarkozy. But he'd be a fabulous president for America.

Film-making is like spermatozoa: only one in a million makes it.