For me, the film has to be incredibly bad to make me want to pack up and leave.

For me, the film has to be incredibly bad to make me want to pack up and leave.

When you see the films of certain young directors, you get the impression that film history begins for them around 1980.

I guess I like a lot of directors. Or at least I try to.

Cocteau is someone who has made such a profound impression on me that there's no doubt he's influenced every one of my films.

I reject the word 'script' entirely-at any rate in the usual sense. I prefer the old usage-usually scenario-which it had in the Commedia dell'Arte, meaning an outline or scheme: it implies a dynamism, a number of ideas and principles from which one can set out to find the best possible approach to filming.

Kubrick is a machine, a mutant, a Martian. He has no human feeling whatsoever. But it's great when the machine films other machines, as in 2001.