Part of the reason my friends and I became successful is that we were always helping each other.

Sometimes people are surprised to learn that most of the films I've made don't work. They've been released but nobody has ever seen them. Maybe 40 percent of them are very successful. That's a very high percentage; most people have maybe 10 or 15 percent of their films work.

I have a lot of ideas and I want to be able to work. To me, it's like one of these contests where you get five minutes in a supermarket to take anything off the shelves you want and try to fill your cart up as much as you can. That's the way I look at my work.

The object is to try to get the (movie) system to work for you, instead of against you. And the only way you can do it is through success, I'm afraid.

A movie is never finished, only abandoned.

It's okay to lose; just don't lose the lesson.

I was going to go to a four-year college and be an anthropologist or to an art school and be an illustrator when a friend convinced me to learn photography at the University of Southern California. Little did I know it was a school that taught you how to make movies! It had never occurred to me that I'd ever have any interest in filmmaking.