As long as I can make lots of money in other businesses, I'll continue to subsidize my own work.

The only TV I would be interested in exploring would be live television. There's no substitute for a team of artists performing at their peak live when failure is possible. It's a high-wire act. That excites me.

But who said art has to cost money? And therefore, who says artists have to make money?

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

I have always credited the writer of the original material above the title: Mario Puzo's The Godfather, Bram Stoker's Dracula, or John Grisham's The Rainmaker. I felt that I didn't have the right to Francis Coppola's anything unless I had written the story and the screenplay.

Anything you build on a large scale or with intense passion invites chaos.

I always knew what I thought the theme was, the core, in one word. In 'The Godfather' it was succession. In 'The Conversation' it was privacy. In 'Apocalypse' it was morality.