Moviemaking is so male-dominated now that they think they’re being pro-feminine when they have women punching each other out.

The worst thing about movie-making is that it's like life: nobody can go back to correct the mistakes.

For perhaps most Americans, TV is an apppliance, not to be used selectively but to be turned on - there's always something to watch.

The first prerogative of an artist in any medium is to make a fool of himself.

He [Bernardo Bertolucci] has the kind of talent that breaks one's heart: where can it go, what will happen to it? In this country we encourage 'creativity' among the mediocre, but real bursting creativity appalls us. We put it down as undisciplined, as somehow 'too much.' Well, Before the Revolution is too much and that is what is great about it. Art doesn't come in measured quantities: it's got to be too much or it's not enough.

The romance of movies is not just in those stories and those people on the screen but in the adolescent dream of meeting others who feel as you do about what you’ve seen.

McLuhanism and the media have broken the back of the book business; they've freed people from the shame of not reading. They've rationalized becoming stupid and watching television.