Martin Scorsese
I think what happened there was just the budget would be too big to build these sets because nothing really exists here in New York of that period; you have to build it all.
I love the look of planes and the idea of how a plane flies. The more I learn about it the better I feel; while I still may not like it, I have a sense of what is really happening.
I know there were many good policemen who died doing their duty. Some of the cops were even friends of ours. But a cop can go both ways.
I don't agree with everything he did in his life, but we're dealing with this Howard Hughes, at this point. And also ultimately the flaw in Howard Hughes, the curse so to speak.
I do know that some Buddhists are able to attain peace of mind.
I certainly wasn't able to get it when I was a kid growing up on the Lower East Side; it was very hard at that time for me to balance what I really believed was the right way to live with the violence I saw all around me - I saw too much of it among the people I knew.
I also saw the Dalai Lama a few times.
Every year or so, I try to do something; it keeps me refreshed as to what's going on in front of the lens, and I understand what the actor is going through.
I just wanted to be an ordinary parish priest.
The term 'giant' is used too often to describe artists. But in the case of Akira Kurosawa, we have one of the rare instances where the term fits.
On every film you suffer, but on some you really suffer.
I'd like to do a number of films. Westerns. Genre pieces. Maybe another film about Italian Americans where they're not gangsters, just to prove that not all Italians are gangsters.
I don't really see many people... don't really go anywhere either.
All my life, I never really felt comfortable anywhere in New York, except maybe in an apartment somewhere.
Some of my films are known for the depiction of violence. I don't have anything to prove with that any more.
I think when you're young and have that first burst of energy and make five or six pictures in a row that tell the stories of all the things in life you want to say... well, maybe those are the films that should have won me the Oscar.
I make different films now.
Sometimes when you're heavy into the shooting or editing of a picture, you get to the point where you don't know if you could ever do it again.
I've been to North Africa many times.
Popular music formed the soundtrack of my life.
Well, I think in my own work the subject matter usually deals with characters I know, aspects of myself, friends of mine - that sort of thing.
You gotta understand, when moving images first started, people wanted sound, color, big screen and depth.
I'm an older generation.
The most important thing is, how can I move forward towards something that I can't articulate, that is new in storytelling with moving images and sound?
I wish I could do everything in 3D.
Film in the 20th century, it's the American art form, like jazz.
I didn't realize there are generations who do not know about the origins of film.
I loved the idea of seeing the world through a boy's eyes.
People have to start talking to know more about other cultures and to understand each other.
Our world is so glutted with useless information, images, useless images, sounds, all this sort of thing. It's a cacophony, it's like a madness I think that's been happening in the past twenty-five years. And I think anything that can help a person sit in a room alone and not worry about it is good.
If we just sit and exist, and understand that, I think it will be helpful in a world that seems like a record that's going faster and faster, we're spinning off the edge of the universe.
I go through periods, usually when I'm editing and shooting, of seeing only old films.
It's hard to let new stuff in. And whether that admits a weakness, I don't know.
Young film makers should learn how to deal with the money and learn how to deal with the power structure. Because it is like a battle.
I always wanted to make a film that had this sort of Chinese-box effect, in which you keep opening it up and opening it up, and finally at the end you're at the beginning.
The fact that food plays such an important part in my films has everything to do with my family.
Food tells you everything about the way people live and who they are.
I think all the great studio filmmakers are dead or no longer working. I don't put myself, my friends, and other contemporary filmmakers in their category. I just see us doing some work.
The Five Points was the toughest street corner in the world. That's how it was known. In fact, Charles Dickens visited it in the 1850s and he said it was worse than anything he'd seen in the East End of London.
Well the thing is that the New York of 1846 to 1862 was very different from downtown New York now. Really nothing from that period still exists in New York.
The best I can do is to make a film every two years.
As a child I had terrible asthma.
A lot of what I'm obsessed with is the relationship and the dynamics between people and the family, particularly brothers and their father.
People say you should do it this way, someone else suggests that, yes, there's financing, but maybe you should use this actor. And there are the threats, at the end - if you don't do it this way, you'll lose your box office; if you don't do it that way, you'll never get financed again... 35, 40 years of this, you get beat up.
There was always a part of me that wanted to be an old-time director. But I couldn't do that. I'm not a pro.
You've got to understand when a collaborator isn't satisfied anymore.
Part of making any endeavour is that each one has its own special problems. It's the nature of the process.
Any film, or to me any creative endeavour, no matter who you're working with, is, in many cases, a wonderful experience.
The bottom line is, I tend to be going back to older and older music.