It's so easy to manipulate an audience, but it's nearly always clear that you are being manipulated. I think even people that are not critically attuned are aware of cynical manipulation in film.

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.

There are always forces at work in a society, which are really forces of censorship - either religious bodies or zealots who are always putting pressure on things, whether it's books or art or film.

All the interesting films are now being made by their subsidiaries for very low budgets. But the studios are not making money. They're making these big, very expensive pictures that take a lot of money but don't really pay for their costs. So they're having a very difficult time. I can see the system breaking down. I think the American studios are a reflection or a metaphor for American industry altogether, which is failing in the world. Its economic domination is being broken down and I think the same thing is happening to the studios.

All the great legends are Templates for human behavior. I would define a myth as a story that has survived.

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

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.