A number of images put together a certain way become something quite above and beyond what any of them are individually.
Most directors have one masterpiece by which they are known. Kurosawa has at least eight or nine.
I've been blessed with enough wealth that I can make a film myself up to a certain budget. So one way I thought I would reinvent myself was just to make these very small, personal films that I've financed myself.
There can't be art without risk. It's like saying No Sex, and then expecting there to be children.
Anyone who's made film and knows about the cinema has a lifelong love affair with the experience. You never stop learning about film.
I'm no longer dependent on the movie business to make a living. So if I want to make movies as other old guys would play golf, I can.
I was the kind of kid that had some talents or ability, but it never came out in school.
I became quite successful very young, and it was mainly because I was so enthusiastic and I just worked so hard at it.
Movies are the art form most like man's imagination.
We had access to too much equipment, too much money, and little by little we went insane.
A director is the ringmaster of a circus that's inventing itself.
I always knew what I thought the theme was, the core, in one word. In 'The Godfather' it was succession. In 'The Conversation' it was privacy. In 'Apocalypse' it was morality.
You ought to love what you're doing because, especially in a movie, over time you really will start to hate it.
Whom God wishes to destroy, He first makes successful in show business.
The great hope is that people who wouldn't normally make films will be making them. Suddenly, one day some little fat girl in Ohio is going to be the new Mozart and make a beautiful film with her father's camera and for once the so called professionalism about movies will be destroyed forever - and it will really become an art form.
I probably have genius. But no talent.
Music is a big factor in helping the illusion of the film come to life. The same way music brings back different periods of our lives.
Collaboration is like the sex of creativity.
Everyone knows the phenomenon of trying to hold your breath underwater - how at first it's alright and you can handle it, and then as it gets closer and closer to the time when you must breathe, how urgent the need becomes, the lust and the hunger to breathe. And then the panic sets in when you begin to think that you won't be able to breathe - and finally, when you take in air and the anxiety subsides...that's what it's like to be a vampire and need blood.
I bring to my life a certain amount of mess.
The photographer and the director are where reality and fantasy meet.
It was the man's dream, and his inspiring attempt to make them come true that remain important.
The professional world was much more unpleasant than I thought. I was always wishing I could get back that enthusiasm I had when I was doing shows at college.
I believe that filmmaking - as, probably, is everything - is a game you should play with all your cards, and all your dice, and whatever else you've got. So, each time I make a movie, I give it everything I have. I think everyone should, and I think everyone should do everything they do that way.
That's part of the requirement for me to be an artist is that you're trying to share your personal existence with others and trying to illuminate modern life, trying to understand life.
