The whole thing of this business is to retain your enthusiasm and, in a sense, retain your innocence and try to practice as much humility as possible.

I look at actors very closely. It's not an accident when the actors excel.

I think that you can't make a movie without a script. But you also can't make movies without actors. You also can't make movies without technicians. And there has to be just one person in charge of everybody, and to me that one person is the director.

It's very eclectic, the way one chooses subjects in the movie business, especially in the commercial movie business. You need to develop material yourself or material is presented to you as an assignment to direct.

I've found that the more experts you have on a movie, the less control the director has.

A disk unbeknownst to the director can go to the producer in another city or in another office and that producer can edit behind the director's back much easier than in the old days. Since these dailies are now put on videotape, more kinds of people have access to dailies.

Casting is 65 percent of directing.