In the case of a film like The Exorcist or To Live and Die in L.A., I saw the whole movie in my head before I went to shoot it. I never did storyboards, or anything like that. I had the film in my head.

All the great countries are at odds with one another over something, and yet if they don't cooperate they're going to blow up.

Violence is not funny.

The informing idea of what you want to say and do, that's what will take you from film school to professional - the idea. That's what is original to you.

Directing is a nice job. It's the best job for me. If I had to pay money to do it, I would do it... Directing is playing. Acting.

None of the chase scenes that I did had any opticals. We had to do all of that physically. The first thing you have to do is see it in your mind's eye. You have to envision it. Imagine someone knitting a sweater or a scarf. They either have a pattern in front of them, or they see a pattern in their mind's eye. Then it's one stitch at a time. That's what shooting a chase is like.

And it was only a week later that I realized a close up of Steve McQueen was worth the greatest landscape you could find.