Seems like everybody has seen 'Cooley High.' That's what put me on the map. Garrett Morris and I go way back, even before the movie. Great guy. We've done theater and stage plays together, Lincoln Center and all kinds of things.
I'm a guy that wants the movie to work. So whatever it takes or whatever you got to do - I'm happy to do.
Back in the days, we had to work with a shoestring budget. We had a movie screen, and we'd show movie trailers on them, and then we'd rip through it and started playing. Now we have a little money to play with to do a cool stage set.
As we continue down the path of automation, virtually every city will have 24-hour convenience stores, 24-hour libraries, 24-hour banks, 24-hour churches, 24-hour schools, 24-hour movie theaters, 24-hour bars and restaurants, and even 24-hour shopping centers.
Some might not know that 'What's Happening' was the television version of 'Cooly High.' When I went on the audition, it was an audition for exactly that: the TV version of the movie.
Pressure is an emotional paralysis. It's hard enough to do the dishes when you're feeling pressured, let alone make a movie.
Look, Hollywood's a mecca, but it's not the final answer. You pick up a camera anyplace in the world, you can make a movie.
Production wants a miracle on every movie. They want us to do something new and amazing - but then they give you a 55-year-old actor with sciatica who doesn't want to train.
If there was a horror movie showing somewhere in Liverpool between 1967 and 1975, I saw it.
A movie that I've seen probably the most is 'Fanny & Alexander,' the Ingmar Bergman movie. I even dragged my friends to the super long version that had an intermission. I don't know how much they liked me that day.
I think people will always want to go see a movie, whether it's a comedy and you want to see it and laugh with people, or whatever.
As a movie star, you get good tables at restaurants.
I was in an acting class taught by Eric Morris, and Jack Nicholson was in the class. He wrote the script for 'Head', so all of us in the class got little tiny parts in the movie.
I do a lot of teen shows and voice over work for animation, so when I got the part in 'The Number 23,' it was really cool because now I get to be in a movie with Jim Carrey. Acting in this movie was really a learning experience for me.
If I want to write a movie, I'll write a screenplay, but if I have an idea for a book, it's something that I think can only be done novelistically.
Honestly, when I had the idea to make 'An Inconvenient Truth,' and I was going out and raising the money, and I said, 'I want to make a movie about Al Gore's slide show, will you give me a million dollars?' People thought I was insane, looked at me cross-eyed.
I'd be much more likely to watch the latest Tarantino movie than to listen to a Mahler symphony.
In some instances, I would say the writer does deserve equal billing with the director. In other instances the director - especially if he wrote part of the script himself - is clearly more the author of the movie.
I love fashion from the 1930s and '40s - shoulder pads, high waists, things with structure. That is classy for me. Andrea Riseborough from the Madonna movie 'W.E.' had an amazing wardrobe.
When you make a book or you make a movie, it is almost like hitting on somebody. It's not because you want to seduce people that you will seduce them; you can hit on somebody and it doesn't work. But when you hit on them and it works, then it's really cool.
The only movie that I would ever even consider retrofitting is the first 'Jurassic Park,' which I think would look pretty spectacular in 3D. That's the only one of my films that I would consider doing in 3D.
I always used to say, as a director, that I could make anybody good in a movie if you found the right part. It all comes down to casting.
Whatever you say to yourself about it being just another movie, and you're going to do the job you always do, it ends up being a 'Bond' movie and a sense of what it is to put music to James Bond and to honor the music that exists.
Well, once I did 'Grease,' everyone was offering me studio pictures in a similar vein - you know, popcorn movie.
For me, the reason to make the movie is that if people like the comic, then people would like the movie if it was well made. There are good movies for them, but very few. And I mean that in a true sense. If they love your story for freaking 30 years, then they can do a movie about it.
The consumer is deciding what they want to see and when and how, and filmmakers are more aware and accepting of the fact that success is not predicated on your movie showing in a traditional theater for a certain amount of time.
I first saw Walter Hill's second film, 'The Driver,' as a teenager, late at night on the BBC, quite possibly sitting too close to the telly. Given that this 1978 slice of neo-noir takes place almost entirely in the dark streets of a deserted downtown L.A., it's really a perfect midnight movie.
I got fired from a movie that ended up being called 'Windows,' which Gordon Willis, the cinematographer, directed. I got fired because he refused to cast Meryl Streep, who at the time was at Yale. I told him I thought he was an idiot, and he fired me.
When I was a kid, I loved Elvis, and Harrison Ford as Indiana Jones. But I had no connection to Hollywood - and being a movie star was such a far-fetched idea, growing up in Hawaii.
I'm the luckiest guy in the world. I got to direct a movie involving three of my favorite things in the world: space operas, Marvel superheroes and raccoons.
Phones and soundtracks and Muzak and fountains replace genuine and unpredictable human contact with a seamless soundtrack from a bad movie and a cliche that makes us believe we must all be happy.
I would just love to do 'It's a Wonderful Life.' I think that movie is fantastic.
I remember growing up thinking that astronauts and their job was the coolest thing you could possibly do... But I absolutely couldn't identify with the people who were astronauts. I thought they were movie stars.
I have a deal with HBO to develop television, and I am also developing a movie called 'The Abstinence Teacher,' which is based on a book by Tom Perrotta.
There will always be another group of kids going to college, drinking beer, and discovering that movie. Many of them have never even heard of SCTV.
People turn into fools when they see a movie star and do weird things.
