There's a way that the force of disappointment can be alchemized into something that will paradoxically renew you.

The only thing I really wanted was the freedom to be able to get what I want on film. I’ve dealt with the MPAA since 1973, so I know how to renegotiate and rework.

I just wanted to be an ordinary parish priest.

Vertigo is probably my favourite Hitchcock film and probably one of my favourite films of all time. It's a film that I'm obsessed with. I saw it on its first release in vista vision, projected in vista-vision, at the Capitol Theatre in New York. That moment when the nun comes up in the end... it's just an extraordinary shot.

I always wanted to make a film that had this sort of Chinese-box effect, in which you keep opening it up and opening it up, and finally at the end you're at the beginning.

It did remind me of something out of Greek mythology - the richest king who gets everything he wants, but ultimately his family has a curse on it from the Gods.

I love the look of planes and the idea of how a plane flies. The more I learn about it the better I feel; while I still may not like it, I have a sense of what is really happening.