I never start editing a film until it's completely shot; I don't edit along the way, ever. When it's finished I come in here [screening room] and we start with reel one, scene one and start editing shot by shot by shot until we're finished.

Life is unresolved, confusing, bewildering, puzzling, ambiguous. You don't really know what's going to happen. The future is uncertain for everybody.

Visually I've always liked the 20s 30s for film. I do these because I like the music. I like the clothes. I like the way the women and the guys look. There are soldiers and sailors and gangsters with the machine guns in their violin cases. It's a very colorful era of New York, full of great theater and great nightclubs and great jazz.

I was thrown out of NYU for cheating-with the deans wife

Where I grew up in Brooklyn, nobody committed suicide. Everyone was too unhappy.

Relationships are really what interest me the most. And I think, in the end, they interest most people the most. Even when you read Tolstoy or something, basically they're about man and woman relationships.

What is it about death that bothers me? Probably the hours.