I have no interest in movies that take you somewhere dark and leave you there, for no reason.

An agent friend of mine who will remain nameless said you can't make a romance about homeless people; nobody wants to see them kiss. And I thought, what a repulsive, repugnant, extraordinary thing to say. I had to think about the fact that the world is probably full of other people who feel like that. The very idea that we spend time trying to humanize humans is extraordinary to me.

In America, they shoot budgets and schedules, and they don't shoot films any more. There's more opportunity in Europe to make films that at least have a purity of intent.

I think when you're trying to produce a relationship on screen that doesn't actually exist, perhaps sometimes there's a temptation to look at each other more, to touch each other more...

I was always waiting for the secret to be handed down to me. Ron Howard asked me what I was waiting for and I went, "Ron, I'm waiting to know the secret. I keep feeling there's some sort of secret that's going to passed on from a director." He went, "Oh no. There is none. You've just got to on and do it and make mistakes and figure it out."

I wanted to know as the director how the actors wanted to tell this story I wanted to know what they thought.

I do feel that scripts get developed now to a point where they're sort of actor-proof. If the actor is not very good, the narrative still survives because it's all in the dialogue. Not to say there aren't great performances in English-language films, because there are every year, but the 1970s were awash with great performances, and I was wondering whether it had to do with the amount of space and the amount of responsibility given to the actors.