In a sense, I think a movie is really a little like a question and when you make it, that's when you get the answer.

I'm no longer dependent on the movie business to make a living. So if I want to make movies as other old guys would play golf, I can.

The photographer and the director are where reality and fantasy meet.

An essential element of any art is risk. If you don't take a risk then how are you going to make something really beautiful, that hasn't been seen before?

I liked to work in a shop down in the basement and invent things and build gadgets.

My film is not a movie; it's not about Vietnam. It is Vietnam.

In America, even the critics - which is a pity - tend to genre-ize things. They have a hard time when genres get mixed. They want to categorize things. That's why I love Wes Anderson's films and the Coen Brothers, because you don't know what you're going to get, and very often you get something that you don't expect and that's just what a genre's not supposed to do.