I didn't want [actress] just to be a woman standing at the window, waving hello and goodbye to men as they came and went in the world that they were struggling through. I wanted her to have a true function.

If there is an auteur who influenced me - and there is only one - that is Charlie Chaplin. And he never won an Oscar.

I've seen films that have made as much as $100, $200 million, but they're not films. They're images. They're flashes. They're many beautiful images, lots of things to look at. They capture you. But it's not a film. It's not something that involves you in a story. They go to cinema now to be blown away by the effects.

I've always had the sensation that people in America are always avant-garde. Very attentive to all the new innovations. But it's very specialized.

It's very difficult to be original.

There's my pessimism. Because I didn't know yet that type of film is always going to become more extinct, that there won't be anymore. Because there will always be more films that win five Oscars like Terms of Endearment.

Just go to Disneyland. You have the impact of how the Americans think, how they dream, what they desire, how they have a good time, what they prefer. I associate this with young people. But many times I think this infantile quality is much better than the false, incomplete concept of adulthood.