Every year or so, I try to do something; it keeps me refreshed as to what's going on in front of the lens, and I understand what the actor is going through.

Food tells you everything about the way people live and who they are.

And so you try your best. Sometimes you go in with one thing, with one desire and come out with something else. In the case of 'The Aviator' it was to create a Hollywood spectacle, but by about the second or third week of shooting you just want to literally survive it. Because don't forget, I also go through the editing process too, and when the film is released I have to talk about it. So, I take all of that very seriously.

The more you see, especially being young, the more you see the past, the more you can draw upon that and the more you can make the present and the future. It's how you process the past and at oftentimes in the picture, there are references to certain imagery from certain pictures, and certain novels.

There must be people who remember World War II and the Holocaust who can help us get out of this rut.

My father had this mythological sense of the old New York, and he used to tell me stories about these old gangs, particularly the Forty Thieves in the Fourth Ward.

During Prohibition, Atlantic City created the idea of the speakeasy, which turned into nightclubs and that extraordinary political complexity and corruption coming out of New Jersey at the time. The long hand that they had-and maybe still do-even had to do with presidential elections.