In France, I am so free. I have more freedom than most American directors could dare to even imagine.

I thought all I had to do was to buy a camera and become a film director. So when I left school I worked at a telephone company, which gave me the money to buy the basic equipment including the camera, the projector and the screen.

In the States, I learned to fight for every idea. Sometimes, a director has to be a tyrant to keep the quality.

This is one of the things I don't like so much about French cinema - we have tendency to concentrate on actors and dialogue and we don't care so much about the visual aspect. I love when you use all the elements at your disposal.

I think of a film as being like a toy train.

There is a new philosophy for weapons: it's more expensive to hurt people than to kill people. It's terrible. When you have a band of guys on the battlefield, if someone is dead, he's dead. If someone is injured then they have to take care of him, so six people are busy.

I hate to lose time on the set. On the set, you have to go at a good pace, because the clock is your master. For that reason, I have to know exactly what I'm trying to get beforehand.