My grandfather lived across the garden from us, and in his attic he had a lot of radios, appliances and inventions that he had made over 50 years, such as a keyboard called a clavioline, which can be heard on some Beatles songs - it was popular in the 60s. So we had all that at home.

It's very hard to say I'm surrealist. It's like saying I'm poetic. It's not something you want necessarily to be aware of.

The first dolly track was somebody who had the idea to put the camera on a boat on a canal. So the boat would move very slowly but steadily. So they would see all that surrounds you and you'd see the landscape changing slowly. So that was the first time.

I like collaboration, I like to incorporate other people's ideas [and] that's what happens when you do a big movie. Unless you're called Stanley Kubrick and you do an independent movie for like $200 million.

I don't like the idea of competition - maybe because I kept losing them when I was a kid. Maybe it's better to be the one who loses?

I think some people feel that if you are going to have 3D, then you have to shoot in 3D, but they shoot 3D, so of course they're going to say 'my way of doing a film is better.' I'm not telling anyone how they should do their film, so why should anyone tell me how I should do mine?

I like actors who just are who they are, with a little bit of qualification to adapt to their character. But mostly they just use their own personality to embody the character.