I am a giant proponent of giant screens. But I accept the fact that most of my movies are going to be seen on phones.

My life is making movies. I like storytelling, and I've got a lot of stories that are stored up in my head that I hope to get out before my time is up.

'American Graffiti' was unpleasant because of the fact that there was no money, no time, and I was compromising myself to death.

Human nature means battling constantly between being completely self-absorbed and trying to be a communal creature. Nature makes you a communal creature. The ultimate single-minded, self-centered creature is a cancer cell. And mostly, we're not made up of cancer cells.

I wanted to be a car mechanic and I wanted to race cars and the idea of trying to make something out of my life wasn't really a priority. But the accident allowed me to apply myself at school. I got great grades. Eventually I got very excited about anthropology and about social sciences and psychology, and I was able to push my photography even further and eventually discovered film and film schools.

The first movies, they just put up a camera and had a train come into a train station, and everybody was amazed. That was sort of all technology.

The one way the world hasn't changed: teaching is still the most important job.