Burt Lancaster was largely responsible for me becoming a director.

I didn't believe that I'd ever be lucky enough to be able to make a living as an actor.

No, I never went to college. Always regretted it, always envied people who did.

With a movie you're creating from the beginning this particular work, let's not call it work of art, because very few movies are works of art, let's just call them bits of popular culture, whatever they are, sometimes very rarely by accident a movie becomes a work of art.

I'm trying to be morally responsible and no more. I don't have an agenda I'm trying to push. People talk about Three Days of the Condor as being anti-government but the last statement in that movie is the CIA guy saying to Robert Redford, "Ask 'em when they're running out. Ask 'em when there's no heat in their homes and they're cold. Ask 'em when their engines stop. Ask 'em when people who have never known hunger start going hungry. You want to know something? They won't want us to ask 'em. They'll just want us to get it for 'em!"

When you make a film you usually make a film about an idea.

Editing feels almost like sculpting or a form of continuing the writing process.