I think one of the successes of Gladiator is how we manage to turn on a dime the character from one thing to another where you believe he is one thing and he is something very different.

Yes, obviously, there's this degree of wanting people to accept other people faiths and philosophies.

I knew exactly what to do on Alien, it was funny.

I love different themes, different venues, different movies. I love to jump about and tackle different subjects. I have no intellectual master plan.

You've got to be able to know someone really well to be able to have a row and then also walk away from it and not have it matter, especially in this business. That doesn't mean to say we have many rows but I think the nearest thing to a row would be just flatly disagreeing with something .

I want to make films about the human condition, what we're doing to the world or ourselves.

The whole process of making movies and writing screenplays is visceral and intuitive.