My job is to assemble this team of collaboration, hope that everyone has a strong ego but no vanity and that we can proceed with a critical path.
My first job on 2001 was to make all of the HAL readouts: the 16 screens that surround HAL's eyes.
Music has a poetry of its own, and that poetry is called melody.
My greatest thrill was the day Mad magazine spoofed 'Ghost.'
New Englanders were settled in compact little communities; they liked to live near the church, and where they could unite for protection from enemies.
On the other hand, I think the ratings system needs some reworking. I don't think this is a movie parents should bring underage children to.
One of the most important tasks of a manager is to eliminate his people's excuses for failure.
I would be going until I went over the bounds of reality and was then caught up in a profound wish to be dead without having to go through the shaming defeat of suicide.
I have had a lot of experience directing actors so although this is my first feature film, it's certainly not my first time directing with big stars.
I'd be perfectly happy never to have to answer anything again about how I work with Ethan, or whether we have arguments, or... you know what I mean? I've been answering those questions for 20 years. I suppose it's interesting to people.
I couldn't have been happier with the relationship we had with Disney, it couldn't have been easier.
I created a creature that I would find very unnerving, and I can't think of a more horrible way for anyone to go out than to be eaten.
IBM was the original contractor for much of the computer interface design on the film.
Certainly since Freudian times, we all recognize that there is something called the libido, and that there are various ways of inspiring it.
But the idea of a man being killed during an episode of love and coming back as a woman started to impress me more and more and more.
I'm always interested in the working class people. I am one. They're subjugated, they're paid very little and they can make it in show biz.
I have a desire to work with some actors I really like, so I hope to get out there soon and be back at it - maybe a little less music in the next one.
I feel that I'm leaving Williamstown too early, but I'd rather leave too early than too late.
From my point of view I work just as hard, I care just as much, if the films fail it doesn't make me suddenly disown them, it just doesn't.
I don't think we soft-pedal anything. These stories are pretty extreme, but the way we're telling them makes them somewhat more humorous.
I don't think you can ever be ahead of your time with cynicism about that subject. No, I don't think it was ahead of its time. I think it was very much a product of its time.
If it doesn't work with an audience you have to make changes, even if it means not hanging onto the things that are your little favourites.
If the film has a seductive nature at all, it's there to draw the viewer in, but I create the visuals in a way that seems absolutely inevitable to me.
He was a psychotic. He was a borderline psychotic. He was a terrific, sensational actor, with a magical screen presence, you couldn't keep your eyes off him, but he was paranoid. He was sure everybody was out to get him.
The people on both sides of the water were accustomed to an orderly government, in which laws were made and administered with regularity and dignity.
We took Beowulf, the epic poem in Old English, and put it right together with John Gardner's contemporary retelling. If you bring it into today, we really feel that it has something very fresh to say now.
Having started as a designer I have a lot to do with settings and costumes, because I think they relate to the story and character, explain it.
He said he wanted me to play a part, and he's done that a couple of times before but I haven't been available because I was making my own pictures.
His music was direct from his heart and brain in the purest form possible.
Hollywood has always been a cage... a cage to catch our dreams.
When they see those fourteen lights, they're looking at a miracle. And deep down, they feel that whatever's going to happen, there will be someone there to help them. And that fills them with hope.
Well you know, Woody doesn't rehearse, as opposed to my own method of directing where I really work with actors around a round table for weeks, examining the values of the material, so his technique is very different.
I always felt like, okay, I'm going to try to tell stories whatever way I can and it would be cool to make a movie, and tell a story that way.
I always feel ill-prepared for commentaries and it had been so long I was afraid I'd forget everything that happened on the film.
There are so many effects and so many things that are done digitally now that it's so hard for the director to really control the process, because there are more and more experts that come in.
Just McDonald's by themselves spends 1.2 billion dollars a year. And that's just radio, television and print. That's an obscene amount of money.
It can't be by hand, it's too perfect.
It always amazed me that he was able to do it, and that Orson Welles was able to do it. I never understood it because the talents are absolutely opposite - polar opposites.
I think when I started in the business, when I had my first aspirations of being in the business, I sort of pictured an idyllic life.
I think, after about a week in, I started to get really down. I would feel better when I would eat.
I went into this job to do plays, but that's here for 10 weeks, and the rest of the year I do a lot of other things-the administrative work of planning, reading plays.
Just go out there and do it. It's not the easiest path.
Over and over again-in the movie, I have nine different people who have worked for Fox News network who have come forward and talked on camera, three of them anonymously, by the way.
Remember that the film is about the digital domain. From the point of view of the scenario, images are evil demons, if I can be so bold.
I wonder if I had gone for laughter and tears from the start how sad (the movie) would've been.
I worked for the studios, making those comedies, and I found I could make enough money then to be able to do the work I was passionate about.
I worked for a lot of great directors.
I was very lucky. I started my own commercial company.
I was very limited in what I could do with flying saucers, because they're just a metal disc. I had to try and put character in as if they were intelligently guided.
I think people are capable of everything I've written. Would they ever do it? I don't know and really don't care, because that's not my business.
I think I'm gonna finish up the stuff I've already committed to and then take a little break, 'cuz I just don't want people to get tired of me.
I think Francis at half form is better than anybody else by 50%, you know? I think it's just that he has never... he has a late pick of the things that are ambitious enough for him.
Maybe our telling of the story wasn't as clear as it should have been, but I don't think that's true. In terms of understanding the story, it comes across.
I'm here to make good pictures. If I don't see it, I won't touch it. I may not make a good picture, but I still gotta believe in it!
Well all kinds of movies that you wouldn't expect that I'd want to do, both bigger scale and smaller scale than the ones I've done.
The American public does not know poets exist.
That whole process of somebody who has all that charisma and talent, to be able to break through and make it in America is fabulous.
I was mesmerized by what it would be like for somebody who was a student of history and archeology to go back to a medieval period and really live it.
I was never restricted. I was never told what to do.
Most of the good executives do pretty well. Because to be a good executive you have to be strong, and you have to have a simple attribute that people have forgotten about - courage.
When I was 50, I said, 'That's it,' And they said, 'How?' I said, 'What do you mean how? I've been working now for 50 years now.'
Yeah, I think that's it... It's like Jesse James. He became really popular because he lasted so long. You know, there is some degree of truth to the fact that time will dignify anything, too.
Today the U.S. is farther from being nourished by poetry than it was a hundred years ago, when books of poems were best-sellers.
True leadership must be for the benefit of the followers, not the enrichment of the leaders.
Yeah, there's absolutely. I mean, remember when The Searchers came out, it was a relatively big hit for a Western, and I think it made 5 million bucks - I don't even think it made that.
You know, why don't you take him off all this stuff you have him hopped up on, all this garbage that we're feeding him, all this sugar and caffeine, and then see what happens?
When he brought it to me four years ago, Rodney King had just arrived, I was involved in the clean-up of L.A. and I guess it was part of my experience.
We probably weren't the first choice because our movies have a certain style and flavor to them which is kind of inconsistent to each one.
Those are fun, especially if they're going to shoot them in four weeks, because you know they're not going to mess with anything you do, so it can be very imaginative.
We began talking about baseball, which led to The Natural. He had a version and that's what happened - we went off and did that film.
When when my first feature opportunity came along, I wasn't prepared, but we did it in about 17 days.
Well, that was certainly - to me, until we could film in Charles' room, I didn't even want to bother filming anything else. And in fact, I did hold off and that was the first thing we filmed.
What I often find is it has to do with, is we need somebody who's in one scene to intimidate somebody who's over 5'10' and there I am on the set.
The real question is the tension between everyone's specific sexuality and the desire to belong, to fit in, to feel like a part of the group.
There are a lot of memories that are very... nutritious. I've had a very fortunate career. I've worked with practically every icon you can think of.
We were working with this lousy print and it just wasn't going to be good enough. I said that we should get the original negative and do it from that. Well, a couple guys pointed out that the negative was locked up over at Deluxe.
We collaborate on everything. I'm involved in the writing and pre-production. There's a whole bunch of people who keep in touch at every step about everything.
When I was doing half-hour shows, I loved it and was preparing myself for the hour shows. Then when I did the hour shows, I was preparing myself for the specials and features.
We've carried that over into the visual development as well. We've designed quite an exotic cast of characters, but the last thing we want is to dictate to the players how their PCs should look. What we want to do is inspire.
When you do a writing job for a studio, one of the things you want to do is satisfy the expectations of your employer. That's a little bit different than when you sit down and write something to satisfy yourself, because then you're the employer.
When I went to live television, I loved it. But television was so new and undeveloped that actors had to concede to the equipment.
Fahrenheit 9/11 took public domain information that should have been on the news every night and put it in a film that a lot of people went to see. But still Bush has never had to answer those charges.
But once I discovered that there was such a thing as a screenwriter and a director and all that, it stayed in my head as a possibility.
To do that I try and keep myself in pretty good shape physically and I try to lead my life in such a way that I'll be able to be as strong at the end of the movie as I am in the beginning.
Todd and I have a very complementary working style .
While they're building a solid foundation that will support whatever is coming down the road, Todd and I are itching to see further, to push the envelope.
You can kind of tell what's working and what isn't. We work on part of the script ourselves and then switch. And we rewrite each other's stuff.
To some degree the colonial conception of government had been affected by the English Commonwealth of 1649, and the English Revolution of 1688.
With Roger, it would be: 'On Page 67, we think this is a little quick to have another attack of Piranhas, so could you put it off until Page 69?'
You have to be a producer nowadays. You have to find the subject, find the writer, find the cameraman, cast it, and then you go to a producer.
We just said, 'Okay, you're in the movie. Bring what you would bring for a three-day weekend and I hope you like the way you look in it because once you're on camera, that's your wardrobe.' But it worked; it worked and we were very surprised.
We had this idea about a woman who you would see on the street and make a host of sexual assumptions, and they would all be wrong.
You don't improvise. Well, you might improvise in a moment, trying to find something but for the most part everything is written by Woody, every word.
You have to really work with someone who you think is going to be a collaborator, who you think understands what you want to do with this movie and how you want to do it.
You get to say, 'Here's my philosophical idea about what the costume should like,' and the costume designer comes and gives you choices and sometimes they're all good, and I say, 'What do you think?' and they pick the right thing.
We think people will really like what we've done and will want to incorporate it into their campaigns, but they shouldn't feel that they have to.
We went into this with the utmost respect for the source material, but we recognized the need for change.
We couldn't have cared less about the government, especially the city government, which produced policemen who did nothing but take graft.
Bound, we knew it was going to be about lesbians. We made it for people who are kind of like us, who are generally kind of bored by movies today.
Even though I can make my own budgets, I always ask for less money than we need so that you have to be more creative, you have to strip it down.