I'm always looking for films, but the horror scripts that I get tend to be very repetitive and often not that interesting.
I get a lot of independent films from people who are starting out.
I actually went to film school and was making experimental films for a short time, so it wasn't such a leap.
I love my films. I have stacks and stacks of DVDs. I put 'Last of the Mohicans' on the other day with Daniel Day-Lewis. It hurts me to say it because he's a Millwall fan, but I think he's fantastic.
I love the work of Hayao Miyazaki. 'My Neighbor Totoro' and 'Castle in the Sky' are two of the great films that he's made that I just love.
Well, I've been in several films including documentaries, but the big blockbuster, I was hired as advisor to the actors, I was trying to make Jesuits out of them.
The really successful work in England tends to be working-class writers telling working-class stories. The film industry has been slow to wake up to that, for a variety of reasons. It still shocks me how few films are written or made in England about working-class life, given that those are the people who go to movies.
All I want is the same opportunities as the filmmakers I grew up admiring. But you know, I've had lots of amazing opportunities to do the movies I wanted to do. If I could write my future, I'd want to keep making character-based films that can make use of my voice as a filmmaker.
All of the silent films had live music accompaniment, so it's actually a very rich period in music.
Whereas European films have traditionally been able to go into adult relationships. I think there's a huge audience in America for those kinds of films.
I think that if we really want to break it down, that non-black filmmakers have had many, many years and many, many opportunities to tell many, many stories about themselves, and black filmmakers have not had as many years, as many opportunities, as many films to explore the nuances of our reality.
I wasn't all that familiar with the 'Texas Chainsaw' franchise, and I knew who Leatherface was, but I had never seen any of the films, so I didn't know what the meaning behind it was.
I don't think that my films are 'literary'; they are based on the most ordinary things of life.
All my films have been criticised, but here I stand with six superhits and three 100-crore films!
I've been really fortunate to be able to do different kinds of films in different scales, different genres, different kinds of roles, and that is important to me.
Documentary films are created in an inverted funnel of declining possibility.
In books or films, it is desirable to have a climactic battle scene, but the world does not operate in those gross dramatic terms. In Vietnam, there was a general aimlessness, not just in the physical sense, but beyond that in the moral and ethical sense.
It's deliberate that a lot of my films have been period pieces.
I've been in enough films where the studio wanted that extra little cuteness to make it sellable.
Sometimes we misunderstand what films can do. We just throw a whole book in there, with people just talking, talking, and talking. The picture can tell, the frame can tell.
My secret ambition was always to provide music for animation films: something with an Indian theme, either a fairy tale or mythological tale or on the Krishna theme. I still have a very deep desire, but these sorts of chances don't always come.
I've never much been interested in doing films that no one gets to see.
I think comics can be the basis for great films, but I think the focus of such a project should be on making the film as good as possible, not on painstakingly replicating the comic.
I was never a villain on the stage. I always played strong, sympathetic types. My first stage role with a speaking part, believe it or not, was as a priest. It wasn't until I began acting in films that the producers and directors saw me primarily as a bizarre villain.
Phillip Harrison was the production designer, though, I think he's uncredited. He's done most of my films like Blue Thunder. Lots and lots over the years.
If I had a choice as to my perfect career, I would make a couple of films a year and then concentrate on natural history.
I definitely want to continue working in independent films - and big budget stuff as well - but there's a freedom you have when you're not getting paid. It's easier to say no and there's no pressure to please the powers that be. Also I don't have to hear 'flirt and smile more.'
It's not just about young people - there are films being made that deal with women getting older. That's a huge bonus, and here in America, that's a huge step forward.
I've always noticed that films set in any sort of future very rarely draw on the present.
My earliest memories of horror are 'Friday the 13th Part 2,' John Carpenter's 'The Thing,' 'Halloween,' 'An American Werewolf in London,' and 'A Nightmare On Elm Street'... and 'Hatchet' is so obviously inspired by those films that I may as well have made it in 1984.
At the end of the day, it is about working in a good film. It's the films that you leave behind that matter.
Films like 'The Godfather,' 'The Exorcist,' 'Klute,' 'Chinatown,' 'Network,' and 'The Parallax View': They were drawn from the genre tradition, but they dressed down the stylistic telling of those traditions and genres.
I've made a lot of stupid action films in my life but I like stupid action films and am kind of proud of them.
Most of Hollywood is about making money - and I love money, but I don't make the films thinking about money.
There's really no precedent for someone like me gaining clout in the space that I'm in - a black woman directing films in Hollywood.
There was a time in the 1980s when I worked in 22 films a year.
