I'll tell you one thing: Don't ever give anybody your best advice, because they're not going to follow it.

Everybody's old enough for a beer, ain't that right, Mule?

It's the post-literate generation that is most disturbing to a movie-maker. The explosions and the knifings. People like to go to what's hot and you can't get past a certain gross unless you involve children who go more than once.

I assume most of the characters I play are exactly like me.

There's no point dwelling on what might or could have been. You just have to go forward.

Before I moved into the mainstream of American movies, I wrote a script as an experiment. I wanted to get very far away from the clichés about the three-act play - structure, development.

The blues and jazz will live forever... So will the Delta and the Big Easy.