I'm trying to suggest a kind of Middle Earth, in Tolkien terms. It's a contiguous world; it's like ours but different.

There's always been this strand of filmmaking in Britain which is like socialist neo-realism. That's always been there. I've never been part of that, really; I've been much closer to fantasy.

And you poor creatures--who conjured you out of the clay? Is God in show business, too?

Black-and-white gives you that sort of parallel world. Also, it's very close to the condition of dreaming, to the unconscious.

I love green. Green is the color of nature, trees. I'm a tree freak. I spend a lot of my time planting trees, nurturing them, and studying them. It's one of the colors I couldn't live without.

Movie-making is the process of turning money into light. All they have at the end of the day is images flickering on a wall.

I was in Japan, and my assistant director had worked with Kurosawa. I used quite of number of Kurosawa's crew.