I think, to go to the bottom of it all, that the films I have made and my kind of film-making is a hybrid type of film-making - in that it isn't American, it isn't Italian.

I even had success with commercials, which is strange, because out of the six ideas, two won the platinum Minerva in France - it's the Oscar for their commercials. One was about the Renault diesel and the other about the regular Renault.

There was also the myth of the western films. But my films are borrowed not from the story of the West in America but from the story of cinema.

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.

Probably the greatest writer of westerns himself was Homer. His character were never all good or all bad. They're half and half, these characters, as all human beings are.

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.

My mother was an actress. My father was an actor and a director. I am the son of filmmakers.