I grew up watching those blaxploitation movies. Ron O'Neal, Richard Roundtree, Jim Brown, Pam Grier. For the first time, I saw 'The Negro' get one over on 'The Man.'
Everyone has a first love, and mine was the western. When I was a child and dreamed of the movies, it was always as a cowboy on a white horse.
I loved all those classic figures from the '30s and '40s... Bette Davis, Joan Crawford, Humphrey Bogart, Rita Hayworth. They had such glamour and style. I loved the movies of those times too - so much attention paid to details, lights, clothing, the way the studios would develop talent.
My agent said, 'You aren't good enough for movies.' I said, 'You're fired.'
I just got an iPhone, which is cool, but I don't download movies, I don't watch Hulu, I don't have Netflix. I don't do any of that. But I do geek out to music.
I was familiar with that and 'Rio Bravo.' 'Rio Bravo' was what John Carpenter did, that brilliant move of taking a western and turning it into an urban flick. And from there you got, you know, all the cop genre movies of the time.
When I went to Paris, I had a lot of ideas about it that were formed in the sort of ether that flows about if you watch too many recent Woody Allen movies or took French classes as a kid. I was certainly full of those.
The whole process of making movies and writing screenplays is visceral and intuitive.
If I do three movies in a year, I don't feel like acting ever again.
One of the most interesting things, at least for me, are the soundtracks for 'The Social Network' and 'Drive.' Basically, it's what I did in 'American Gigolo.' I could have done the music for those movies blindfolded. And one of them won an Oscar, and the other is this massive soundtrack.
I think that no matter whether you're Quentin Tarantino or any other kind of a rebel, or whatever, everyone who makes movies still wants to win an Academy Award, because it's like the Pulitzer Prize or the Congressional Medal of Honor.
I learned English from watching American movies and American series. And you'd watch the movie the first time and not understand anything. Then you'd watch it again, and you'd start understanding more and more, and that's how I learned English.
There are people who would rather choke than go see my movies. They write me letters all the time.
I want to go back home and make movies in Australia. There's so many stories that we haven't captured yet. In Australia, we cling on to whatever culture we have. We're such a multicultural country.
I always loved television. I always loved movies.
I don't believe in the so-called Latino explosion when it comes to movies. Jennifer Lopez doesn't have an accent. She grew up in New York speaking English, not Spanish. Her success is very important because she represents a different culture, but it doesn't help me.
I don't stop. It's my nature. People have to tell me to slow down. I plan on playing every role on Broadway. I want to do 'Evita.' I want to do 'Sweeney Todd' with Chris Colfer. We want to do 'Wicked.' I'll be Elphaba and he wants to play 'Guy-linda.' I want to do movies, make music. 'Glee' is only the beginning.
My sense is, I think it's okay for directors to do movies that speak to other work in their career.
I love the beautiful distractions of the world - television and movies, video games, the Internet in general. But I try really hard to avoid them, because they don't help me become a better writer. They subtract hours from my day. And a writer's main currency is time. Time to daydream, time to walk and think, time to sit and do the work.
I want to make movies that I want to see, and what I miss and I'm not seeing.
There are many movies that have done it very badly. The studios have gone for quick profits and audiences are feeling angry. People aren't taking the time and spending the money to do it right. I am.
Some say Hollywood movies that are made about boxing are just metaphors for other things, I think I've made one that's actually about boxing and not a metaphor.
I used to love to go to the movies - I'd see two in a row. A few times I even snuck into the second movie after it started... now that I think about it, that's kind of like shoplifting! Needless to say, I still love going to the movies, but I don't sneak in anymore.
One of my favorite movies of all time is 'It's A Wonderful Life,' which is a pretty interesting choice for a seasonal Christmas favorite, because it's about a guy who wants to commit suicide and is presented with reasons not to.
When I was little, I watched a lot of Disney movies - so I always imagined a big fairytale wedding as a kid. But when marriage became real, I felt an intimate wedding with close family and friends would be better.
So I like to try to go back and develop pure visual storytelling. Because to me, it's one of the most exciting aspects of making movies and almost a lost art at this point.
We are constantly - in order to cope with painful realities - shuffling through third-rate, half-remembered fantasies taken from movies, from TV, from people we admire. We do this individually, we do it collectively - we tell stories to escape our most painful truths.
Why did I spend all these years playing boring Europeans? I was made for action movies.
I don't think Hollywood was trying to do anything with me. In fact, they lost interest pretty quick. I think I got lucky, briefly, in the '90s, and it just so happened that those movies were the opportunities that came my way. Then it just kind of stopped.
I really hate relaxing. I've done three movies in a row, worked for two years straight, and to me, idle time is the devil's workshop. I like to focus on something.
Stephen Hawking's been watching too many Hollywood movies. I think the only kind aliens in Hollywood are the ones created by Steven Spielberg - 'Close Encounters of the Third Kind' and 'E.T.,' for example. All other aliens are trying to suck our brains out.
When you look at movies like 'Titanic,' they make money because of women. They go to see it and bring their men, too.
Whether it is the cavemen in the caves thousands of years ago, Shakespeare plays, television, movies and books, stories and characters take us on a journey. All I do is tell those stories without scripts and without actors.
I like action-adventure movies.
I don't see as many movies as I used to. Or, I should say, as many movies as I would like to.
I've always loved movies and animation. When I was little, I was always pretending to be some alter ego superhero. For years it was Ultraman, ninjas, Spiderman and other cool super heroes.
