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 always my interest in making movies is to have something really technical mixed with something that was not so formal...something free.

In the '90s movies were so serious, and so stylistic and slick that I could not identify with them.

You need philosophy. It sounds a little pompous but I think when you direct a film, the only way to find a response to the questions you keep asking yourself is to have a philosophy.

Sometimes it's interesting to see something that you're not used to seeing, which is the main ingredient of life, and it's removed from the usual entertainment. I think it's important to give the opportunity to people to witness the life of somebody who was not public.

It's a very American thing that everything has to be a business. Americans think... I like America, or I would not be here. There are great qualities to this country. But this sense that everything has to be a business is sometimes overwhelming.

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.