A lot of it [success] is luck. That's a huge part of it that no one wants to talk about. You just got to be in the right place at the right time.

What a director does... essentially, it's storytelling, but a director also controls the feeling and the sounds and the texture. It's an act of creation, like a symphony or a painting or a story. But with different tools.

We've got the prettiest girls in the world here in Los Angeles and there's a great music scene. And I learned what I learned about cinema here in Los Angeles so it's always been really important to me as a city to live in and I love making movies about it.

Movies are pieces of film stuck together in a certain rhythm, an absolute beat, like a musical composition. The rhythm you create affects the audience.

Directing is all about storytelling. It's not about equipment, or anything else.

From a will: And to my communist nephew Oswald, I leave the sum of 10,000 pounds - to be shared equally with his fellow Britishers.

I don't want to be a part of the demographics. I want to be an individual. I wear each of my films as a badge of pride. That's why I cherish all my bad reviews. If the critics start liking my movies, then I'm in deep trouble.