Motion pictures are the art form of the 20th century, and one of the reasons is the fact that films are a slightly corrupted artform. They fit this century - they combine Art and business!

First, you have to be intelligent. I have never met a successful director who isn't intelligent. A director who is not intelligent might have one hit picture, but he won't be able to follow it up. So I look for intelligence.

Martin Scorsese was one of the few who had not been an assistant. Most of the guys had been an assistant and worked their way up. But I had seen an underground picture he had made in New York, a black-and-white film. I had done a picture for American International, about a Southern woman bandit, the Ma Barker story, and it was very successful, and I had left to start my own company, and they wanted me to make another one.

I'm not going to shoot seven days a week. I think it's counterproductive. I think you're going to have people stumbling around after a couple of weeks.

Motion pictures are the art form of the 20th century, and one of the reasons is the fact that films are a slightly corrupted artform. They fit this century - they combine Art and business!

There are eleven or twelve or thirteen cities in China with populations of over 10 million people and most people in the West have never even heard of these cities.

There's always something that draws you away from the original script.