I look for a thematic idea running through my movies and I see that it's the outsider struggling for recognition. I realize that all my life I've been an outsider, and above all, being lonely but never realizing it.

Howard Hughes was this visionary who was obsessed with speed and flying like a god... I loved his idea of what filmmaking was.

Always get to the set or the location early, so that you can be all alone and draw your inspiration for the blocking and the setups in private and quiet. In one sense, it's about protecting yourself; in another sense, it's about always being open to surprise, even from the set, because there may be some detail that you hadn't noticed. I think this is crucial. There are many pictures that seem good in so many ways except one: They lack a sense of surprise, they've never left the page.

We cannot burn Mick Jagger. We want the effect, but we can't burn him.

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.

I don't think there's a subject matter that can't absorb 3-D; that can't tolerate the addition of depth as a storytelling technique.

My whole life has been movies and religion. That's it. Nothing else.