One of the worst things you can do is have a limited budget and try to do some big looking film. That's when you end up with very bad work.

A great director, first, is highly intelligent. And he is also a dedicated and willing to work hard. Now those are easy things to identify. The third is the creativity, and that is very difficult to identify in advance. This is why so many of the directors who have started with me were my assistant - the first one was Francis Ford Coppola.

Jim Cameron is proof that if you are good, you'll get promoted.

I do believe motion pictures are the significant art form of our time. And I think the main reason is, they're an art form of movement, as opposed to static art forms of previous times.

People gravitate occasionally to the brilliantly made art low budget films, which is maybe one out of every five hundred low budget films made.

There was a fairly big difference between Detroit and Beverly Hills. I remember this. Detroit actually was a prosperous bustling city when we moved here in 1941. But the first day in Detroit, you always wore a shirt and a tie to school. And I wore a shirt and a tie to Beverly Hills High School, and a girl came up to me and said, "Where are you from?" And I said, "Detroit." And she said, "And you won't be wearing a tie tomorrow, will you?" And I said, "You're absolutely correct." So that was my first adjustment to a slightly more casual environment.

In order to create art today, you have to compromise your art somewhat and be a businessman.