When I'm making a film, I'm the audience.

Well the thing is that the New York of 1846 to 1862 was very different from downtown New York now. Really nothing from that period still exists in New York.

You've got to protect whatever creative talent you have left.

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.

Young film makers should learn how to deal with the money and learn how to deal with the power structure. Because it is like a battle.

My working-class Italian-American parents didn't go to school, there were no books in the house.

I don't like being in houses alone.