It's ironic that at age 32, at probably the greatest moment of my career, with The Godfather having such an enormous success, I wasn't even aware of it, because I was somewhere else under the deadline again.

I don't go on set with an army of people because the most expensive elements of a movie production are the plane tickets, the hotel rooms, food and gasoline. If you're willing to discover new colleagues in the place that you are, you can save a ton of money.

That's part of the requirement for me to be an artist is that you're trying to share your personal existence with others and trying to illuminate modern life, trying to understand life.

Listen, if there's one sure-fire rule that I have learned in this business, it's that I don't know anything about human nature.

Today's winemakers still worry about quality.

I had an older brother who was very interested in literature, so I had an early exposure to literature, and and theater. My father sometimes would work in musical comedies.

A lot of the young people make beautiful films or big films or are able to finance them, but they can't get anyone to distribute them, they can't get anyone to see them, so they go to these thousands of film festivals. So I still believe that even though a young kid might be able to make a masterpiece or something that changes the direction of cinema, the issue of how to get it to people is still not solved.