My siblings and I, we were raised on TV and films. Not a day went by that we weren't watching one of three movies - 'Caddyshack,' 'Animal House,' 'Beverly Hills Cop' - on rotation. Our comedy, our personalities were set watching 'Sesame Street': these really sort of wacky, Jim Henson-y characters.
'Naked' kind of kicked me off into the film world. It just so happens that all of the things that I have been offered have been films, and I've enjoyed the travel that goes along with that.
My senior thesis was a documentary. By the time I graduated from college, I thought I was going to make films, and my interest in acting was there but kind of confused.
I started writing movie scripts. They excited me a lot, but I didn't like them when they were finished because they were simple copies of the films I saw in childhood.
I see bits and pieces of me in all the characters in my films.
My principal job is to make interesting and entertaining films, and I'm not proud of which format or which particular technique I use. I just wanted the film to look good.
Hard Day's Night was one of those great films that will never happen again to anyone in their lifetime. UA were in profit before we'd even finished shooting - The advance sales on the album - the film was out before the album was out was more than it cost UA to make the film.
I started when I was eight, doing super 8 films.
As with instant replay, NFL Films' use of slow motion, camera angles and the narration of Facenda was not just a technical breakthrough but a conceptual breakthrough.
I got too fed up with films that didn't make you think. I liked the idea of one that you'd have to be dancing around with. I like my mind to be engaged when I watch a film.
But I have had the luxury of working on good films with great people.
Life goes on pretty much the same way. I've been working on a couple of films on the side. You may see some more. You may even see another television show.
They do think it is a big summer movie and that's why they want to give it a great chance, but they don't want to go up against Spider-Man 2 or some of the other big movies, the $100 million films that are coming up.
In the early '90s, I was hired to write educational dramas about HIV and AIDS in the shantytowns. I did that for two and a half years, and then I was hired on other films. When 'Tsotsi' presented itself, I thought, 'This is not a world I grew up in, but I've spent a great deal of time writing about it and researching it in my past.'
Indian films are like our food or our sense of dress or our languages: there's a great variety, and it changes every 100 miles, but there is something in common, a national Indian essence, that binds them all together.
I often find the smaller, independent films are much more rewarding than the bigger stuff, but you do the bigger stuff because it's a business, and you've got to show your face a bit, get yourself around.
Films have gotten leaner and leaner, cutting out all variations from the story line.
I'll be with The Goat until the fall. Then I've been given three plays to look at and there have been a couple of films have come over the desk. I will probably not do either one of them.
Enjoy the films I do, get entertained, get your money's worth, and when you leave the theatre, leave it all behind!
I managed to get a short film with Channel 4 Films. I cast a young actor who'd done a bit of television before, a young actor called Ewan McGregor. That was very first thing. This writer had won this competition, and I made this little short, black and white movie. I think for both Ewan and I it was the start of our careers.
There are many great writers out there and, actually, great scripts. The problem is - and this is what I've always felt, even when I got out of school and started reading scripts - the really smart, character-driven stuff tends to be smaller films, and they just don't get made.
To be honest, my friends weren't really as into making films as I was. But I convinced them all to make some zombie films with me.
I haven't done the Star Wars kind of films.
This guy Simon Helberg, who's in 'Florence Foster Jenkins,' I might have been vaguely patronizing to him because he hadn't done films before. Gradually, you realize, not only is the guy a much bigger star than me, he's maybe the richest man I've ever met.
I think there's only one or two films where I've had all the financial support I needed. All the rest, I wish I'd had the money to shoot another ten days.
In India, the films are not looked upon just as entertainment. They're a way of life.
It's an entire industry focusing on young male viewers that want action and violence. They sell us something that isn't valid. They're selling films like a product.
Filmmakers are going to make films, just like painters are going to paint.
If dreams are like movies, then memories are films about ghosts.
In my films, I either want the music to be very subtle and very buried or just put it right out in front and be super blunt with it.
It is not my job to compare my movies. I don't like to compare my films with other movies because I don't really have that perspective. It is an intellectual exercise, but it doesn't intuitively come to me.
The United States has made a massive effort since the end of the Second World War to secure the dominance of its films in foreign markets - an achievement generally pushed home politically, by writing clauses into various treaties and aid packages.
I take the fact that films cost a lot of money very seriously, but once in a while to have somebody say, This is a big scene, take your time with it, is important. That's John Sayles.
The films that have influenced me and the films that have motivated me and inspired me were films that resonated, films that made me think after I saw them.
I'm proud of all the movies I've made. They're not sequels, they're not franchises. And the reason I pick my films carefully is that I don't want to spit on my life. I like to think of myself as more than that.
So, not for lack of love of language, but because I feel our language is in an enormous state of humiliation, I decided to make films without words.
