When I started making films, I wanted to make Frank Capra pictures. But I`ve never been able to make anything but these crazy, tough pictures. You are what you are.

Filmmaking is exploring. Why would I want to make a film about something I already understand?

My films are expressive of a culture that has had the possibility of attaining material fulfillment while at the same time finding itself unable to accomplish the simple business of conducting human lives. We have been sold a bill of goods as a substitute for life. What is needed is reassurance in human emotions; a re-evaluation of our emotional capacities.

Films today show only a dream world and have lost touch with the way people really are... In this country, people die at 21. They die emotionally at 21, maybe younger... My responsibility as an artist is to help people get past 21... The films are a roadmap through emotional and intellectual terrain that provides a solution on how to save pain.

When I started making films, I wanted to make Frank Capra pictures. But I`ve never been able to make anything but these crazy, tough pictures. You are what you are.

To me there is a name for each person. I think it’s marvelous to have a name. A woman is not a woman. It’s either Gena or my mother or some other person.

The camera is the slave to the actor.