We live in a society that has no adequate images anymore, and if we do not find adequate images and an adequate language for our civilization with which to express them, we will die out like the dinosaurs.

Robert Rodriguez, makes a feature film in 35mm celluloid one and a half hours long, and nobody believed him, I think he wrote a book about it and gave all the details of how he spent the money, even making a 35mm celluloid feature film was possible, at least for Rodriguez.

The daredevil aspect to what I did there is moving a monstrously big ship over a mountain in the jungle of Peru with 800 or 900 or so native people from the area. So that idea was wild but the way it was executed was prudent. Nobody was ever hurt and when it became clear that we had to be more secure with the posts that would hold the ship, I spent 12 days having a post built that would have withstood the force of 10 times the weight of my ship.

When I film, there are no emotions. That would be the last thing.

The opinion of the public is sacred. The director is a cook who merely offers different dishes to them and has no right to insist they react in a particular way. A film is just a projection of light, completed only when it crosses the gaze of the audience[...]

Facts do not convey truth. That's a mistake. Facts create norms, but truth creates illumination.

It's very strange, for example, in North Korea where the volcano at the Chinese border is some sort of the mythical birthplace of the Korean people.