I never cared about making one coherent masterpiece with a conventional narrative. I always wanted my movies to have images falling from all directions in a vaudevillian way. If you didn't like what was happening in one scene, you could just snooze through it until the next scene. That was the thing about vaudeville: You didn't have to worry about the beginning and ends of these things.

Even Gene Kelly: I always preferred him to Fred Astaire, just because he was more athletic, like skateboarding. His leaps were big. There was something really great about his moves.

If Richard Wagner lived today, he would probably work with film instead of music. He already knew back then that the 'Great Art Form' would include a sort of fourth dimension; it was really film he was talking about.

For certain things, certain audiences, people will laugh. And in other places, there's dead silence. And I enjoy them both. You try to make films where it's never one way - like life.

After 100 years, films should be getting really complicated. The novel has been reborn about 400 times, but it's like cinema is stuck in the birth canal.

Editing is fun for me. That's where you make things happen. Filming a movie, I just try to set things up and see where it goes. Editing is a puzzle. I often don't even know what I'm trying to say. I'm just trying to make myself laugh. That's it. It's musical, or something.

I like working with family and friends and people I admire. All my movies are filled with family members of some capacity. I think it means more when you have a personal relationship with someone.