I didn't grow up thinking of movies as film, or art, but as movies, something to do on a Saturday afternoon.

People aren't interested in paying $10 or $12 to go to the movies and to be lectured to politically. I'm not either. So I don't try to make those kinds of films.

I'm not a very good predictor in any area of art, particularly my own. I don't know how to evaluate that.

There's a religious basis to their [Bush and Chaney] kind of conservatism. It's rooted in a kind of fundamentalism. I'm afraid of that. I don't like that idea. I think all extremism is suspect.

I make films, and I hope that people come to see them. If they don't, I pay a big price. But I can't make decisions where I would change my own standards or my own taste in order to court the public in some way.

By that I mean, I think that it is true that politics and political heroes have to satisfy our need to be greater than mortal in some way, and that's led them into creating illusions, sound bites, focus groups that tell you what to do.

Well, the wonderful thing about making movies, oddly enough, is that they're sort of highly motivated graduate studies in one or another field.