What is passion? It is surely the becoming of a person. Are we not, for most of our lives, marking time? Most of our being is at rest, unlived. In passion, the body and the spirit seek expression outside of self. Passion is all that is other from self. Sex is only interesting when it releases passion. The more extreme and the more expressed that passion is, the more unbearable does life seem without it. It reminds us that if passion dies or is denied, we are partly dead and that soon, come what may, we will be wholly so.

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

You can't get an actor to do something that is beyond his range, so you have to be aware of the range of the actor and, if necessary, alter the part to suit the actor.

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.

What is passion? It is surely the becoming of a person. Are we not, for most of our lives, marking time? Most of our being is at rest, unlived. In passion, the body and the spirit seek expression outside of self. Passion is all that is other from self. Sex is only interesting when it releases passion. The more extreme and the more expressed that passion is, the more unbearable does life seem without it. It reminds us that if passion dies or is denied, we are partly dead and that soon, come what may, we will be wholly so.

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

The resistance to black-and-white is huge, in the way that you have to sell the film. It's difficult to distribute around the world.