I think as you grow up, you realize you have obligations just in your life - being a citizen, being part of humanity - to help other people, to help your country, to help the world.

I've discovered that most critics themselves are cinematically illiterate. They don't really know much about movies. They don't know the history. They don't know the technology. They don't know anything. So for them to try to analyze it, they're lost.

We seemed to be drifting as a society - losing touch with the basic concepts of right and wrong.

I was never interested in being powerful or famous. But once I got to film school and learned about movies, I just fell in love with it. I didn't care what kind of movies I made.

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.

That's the issue that I've been exploring: How did the Republic turn into the Empire? That's paralleled with: How did Anakin turn into Darth Vader? How does a good person go bad, and how does a democracy become a dictatorship? It isn't that the Empire conquered the Republic, it's that the Empire is the Republic.

If you want to be successful in a particular field of endeavor, I think perseverance is one of the key qualities.