I've been offered lots of movies. There's always some actor who's doing a project and would like to have me do it. But you look at the project and think, 'Gee, there are a lot of good directors who could do that.' I'd like to do something only I can do.
I never went to a psychologist or psychiatrist in my life. Never. You know, Italians are a little prejudiced against that kind of thing.
If you're not allowed to experiment anymore for fear of being considered self-indulgent or pretentious or what have you, then everyone's going to just stick to the rules - there's not going to be any additional ideas.
I think a sequel is a waste of money and time. I think movies should illuminate new stories.
Listen, if there's one sure-fire rule that I have learned in this business, it's that I don't know anything about human nature.
The essence of cinema is editing. It's the combination of what can be extraordinary images of people during emotional moments, or images in a general sense, put together in a kind of alchemy.
I was a pretty shy, lonely kid. I blossomed about age 17, when I went to college.
In a sense, I think a movie is really a little like a question and when you make it, that's when you get the answer.
So give yourself that chance to put together the 80, 90 pages of a draft and then read it very in a nice little ceremony, where you're comfortable, and you read it and make good notes on it, what you liked, what touched you, what moved you, what's a possible way, and then you go about on a rewrite.
The essence of cinema is editing.
When I was about 9, I had polio, and people were very frightened for their children, so you tended to be isolated. I was paralyzed for a while, so I watched television.
Stay innocent. I'm 69 years old, and I'm still innocent.
I like to work in the morning. I like to sometimes go to a place where I'm all alone where I'm not going to get a phone call early that hurts my feelings, because once my feelings are hurt, I'm dead in the water.
I have more of a vivid imagination than I have talent. I cook up ideas. It's just a characteristic.
When I was sixteen or seventeen, I wanted to be a writer. I wanted to be a playwright. But everything I wrote, I thought, was weak. And I can remember falling asleep in tears because I had no talent the way I wanted to have.
Some critics are stimulating in that they make you realise how you could do better, and those are valued.
You're in a profession in which absolutely everybody is telling you their opinion, which is different. That's one of the reasons George Lucas never directed again.
I was terrible at maths, but I could grasp science, and I used to love to read about the lives of the scientists. I wanted to be a scientist or an inventor.
I was raised as a Catholic, but I didn't like the Catholic Church at all. I thought the nuns were mean.
I like simplicity; I don't need luxury.
Cinema without risk is like having no sex and expecting to have a baby.
My family were symphonic musicians and in the opera. Also, it was my era, the love of radio. We used to listen to the radio at night, close our eyes and see movies far more beautiful than you can photograph.
I wanted to be a film student again, as a man in my 60s. To go someplace alone and see what you can cook up, with non-existent budgets. I didn't want to be surrounded by comforts and colleagues, which you have when when you're a big time director. I wanted to write personal works.
If you're a person who says yes most of the time, you'll find yourself in the hotel business and the restaurant business.
The stuff that I got in trouble for, the casting for The Godfather or the flag scene in Patton, was the stuff that was remembered, and was considered the good work.
