I get out of the taxi and it's probably the only city which in reality looks better than on the postcards, New York.

Ideological pressure is much more crippling than commercial pressure. Crippling to your own freedom of thinking and creating, crippling the final results. If you wanted to succeed during the really hard-line totalitarian regime, you have to make so many compromises to please the censors that you don't recognize the original idea from the final result.

I'm convinced the Beatles are partly responsible for the fall of Communism.

So, thanks God, our films, our first films were suddenly being appreciated by the Western media; especially France was very good, and Switzerland was very good.

So I left with Jean Claude and went to Paris, so when the Russians came to Prague, I was in Paris.

Well, I wouldn't say that this experience had any influence on my decision to do this film about Andy, because Andy was apolitical. Andy was never political.

I tell you, in my opinion, the cornerstone of democracy is free press - that's the cornerstone.