I loved the material when I first read it, and the experience of making the film was a great one. So when we came around to complete the trilogy, I just signed on board without even reading the scripts because the experience of the first film was so good.

If you go to a bad movie, it’s two hours. If you’re in a bad movie, it’s two years.

When you are an actor, you have to stay inside this world, but when you are with the crew, on the outside, you are in the dirt, working through all the issues. It’s just a different way of working, and I think I preferred it.

I loved photography and everybody said it was a crazy thing to do because in those days nobody made it into the film business. I mean, unless you were related to somebody there was no way in.

I will never win an Oscar, and do you know why? First of all, because I’m not Jewish. Secondly, I make too much money for all those old farts in the Academy.

I seem to be getting a lot of things pushed my way that are strong women. It’s like people see Hackers and they send me offers to play tough women with guns, the kind who wear no bra and a little tank top. I’d like to play strong women who are also very feminine.

I’ve choreographed all of my movies.

When we talk about how movies used to be made, it was over 100 years of film, literal, physical film, with emulsion, that we would expose to light and we would get pictures.

This film cost $31 million. With that kind of money I could have invaded some country.

A special effect is a tool, a means of telling a story. A special effect without a story is a pretty boring thing.

I always play women I would date.

In 3-D filmmaking, I can take images and manipulate them infinitely, as opposed to taking still photographs and laying them one after the other. I move things in all directions. It’s such a liberating experience.

Brad and I have never wanted our kids to be actors, but we also want them to be around film and be a part of Mommy and Daddy’s life and for it not to be kept from them, either. We just want them to have a good, healthy relationship with it.

Meryl and Katharine Hepburn are probably the two greatest actresses of this and the last century.

I’ve always said the one advantage an actor has of converting to a director is that he’s been in front of the camera. He doesn’t have to get in front of the camera again, subliminally or otherwise.

Where I think the most work needs to be done is behind the camera, not in front of it.

I’ve seen too many ups and downs in the movie industry.

Other than obvious errors like forgetting a line, often I can’t see any difference between take one and take 20.

Film is not an easy occupation. There’s a lot of occupations that are difficult and film is one of them.

I love good film, whether it’s an independent or studio film. The independent films, I think the good ones aren’t necessarily eccentric ones but they’re the more specific ones.

I am capable of holding the quote-unquote ‚title‘ of leading man. Leading man just means people want to see you and assume that you can hold a film, carry a movie.

On ‚Mystic River,‘ I had to cut my salary and everyone else’s to get it made.

If you really love films, and you really want to get the full impact, there’s a huge difference between watching something on a small screen with a mediocre sound system and watching it on a giant screen in a giant theater with a huge beautiful sound system. I mean, the difference is electric.

I probably could have toured off ‚Trilogy‘ for the rest of my life. It definitely changed the culture. No one can do a trilogy again without thanking The Weeknd.

I would love to sign on to do a movie if it was the right role and if it was the right script, because I would be taking time away from music to tell a big grand story, and spend all of my time and pouring all of my emotions into being someone else. So for me to do that, it would have to be a story worth telling.

If my films make one more person miserable, I’ll feel I have done my job.

I am not influenced by the techniques or fashions of any other motion picture company.

For ‚Star Wars‘ I had to develop a whole new idea about special effects to give it the kind of kinetic energy I was looking for. I did it with motion-control photography.

The next thing I knew, I was out of the service and making movies again. My first picture was called, GI Blues. I thought I was still in the army.

Film is a very tight little box. If you don’t fit in that box, you’re gone. Television, there’s more room to move around.

‚Kiss Land‘ is the story after ‚Trilogy‘; it’s pretty much the second chapter of my life. The narrative takes place after my first flight; it’s very foreign, very Asian-inspired. When people ask me, ‚Why Japan?‘ I simply tell them it’s the furthest I’ve ever been from home. It really is a different planet.

I think the whole stigma of ‚black movies‘ is slowly being lost. When you look at movies like ’12 Years A Slave,‘ to ‚The Butler,‘ to ‚The Best Man,‘ to ‚Ride Along,‘ to even ‚Think Like a Man‘ from last year – these movies are just good movies.

When you’re supposed to be close and friends in the film, the moment you’re talking as friends off the set, it makes it that much better when you’re filming.

I knew the second I finished the first record – ‚House Of Balloons‘ – and had all this material leftover that a trilogy would be best.

The movie business is a big gamble.

I want to try something different in Hollywood, to tell the audience I am not just an actor star – I am an actor, too.

Michelle Pfeiffer hasn’t been finding a lot of work recently because she doesn’t like what a woman her age is offered. That’s a real double standard. You get Sean Connery, who gets older and older, still playing opposite young ladies, but it doesn’t work the other way around.

How do people relate to movies now, when they’re on portable devices or streaming them? It’s not as much about going to the movies. That experience has changed.

Hollywood has a way of making everything seem like an overnight success.

Movies were invented for Jimmy Cagney, and he was invented for the movies. A perfect match.

I’ll continue to make the typical Adam Sandler comedies.

There’s only one thing that can kill the movies, and that’s education.

I think the message has already been sent to Hollywood, which is that this kid’s a hard worker, he’s talented, and people are coming out to see him. And when you have box-office results, Hollywood treats you different. Hollywood stands up.

Here’s the thing. We do a movie with a predominantly black cast, and it’s put in a category of being a black film. When other movies are done with a predominantly white cast, we don’t call them a white film. I’m trying to remove the stigma off things they call black films.

There’s a lot of great movies that have won the Academy Award, and a lot of great movies that haven’t. You just do the best you can.

When you are a beginning film maker you are desperate to survive. The most important thing in the end is survival and being able to get to your next picture.

I kind of make a film for myself to sort of express myself.

I’m one of those people who says, ‚yes, cinema died when they invented sound.‘

See, ‚A Time to Kill‘ was the one I got famous off of. Big ka-boom, over one weekend. After that, I did films that I really wanted to do.

My friend James Cameron and I made three films together – True Lies, The Terminator and Terminator 2. Of course, that was during his early, low-budget, art-house period.

I make American films for American audiences and Asian films for Asian audiences.

In Hollywood, a lot of times when something is in development, it just takes a lot of time.

I realized why directors are such horrible people – in a way – because you want things to be right, and people will just not listen to you, and there is no time to be nice to people, no time to be delicate.

Being a stunt coordinator, I have to take care not only of myself but I have to make sure everyone is safe.

I have a producing partner named Stephen Hamel, and we’ve been trying to generate material.

You just don’t know when you get in the editing room what you will need as a link or a tool for a transition. If you’re in a room, and there’s a kettle boiling, get a shot of it. Don’t worry if people think you’re nuts.

My wish is to bring my heroes to the big screen, and many of them have already appeared in my films.

But I do believe that there’s going to be a time where all movies are going to be made in 3D and it’s just going to be a given, and that is going to be an exciting time.

I want to be an executive producer.

‚Border‘ was the first movie that I watched on the big screen. It always takes me back to my childhood.

You have to steal a lot. You have to have a criminal mentality to be a film director.