I remember growing up with television, from the time it was just a test pattern, with maybe a little bit of programming once in a while.

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 gladly, I voluntarily gave up the kind of commercial film career I had going as soon as I had enough money to finance my own films.

I had to get a job, and of course, the job was 'The Godfather.' That made me be something I didn't know I was going to be. I became a big-shot director.

Theater actually took time to pique my interest. It just wasn't a part of my upbringing. I don't have anyone in the arts in my family. I wasn't brought up particularly cultured. It was always TV and film for me.

For me, the aim of making any film like this, any film about an artist, would be to send you back to the art.

I'm definitely of the 'Harry Potter'-transfigured-me-into-a-reader-and-writer generation. And that's really all I read throughout my teen years, because I really devoted all my time to writing and reading friends' fan-fiction.

I'm not a propaganda machine. I tell things how I see them. When I say, for example, that corruption is not the only thing the West should think about when they think about Nigeria, I'm not saying it doesn't exist but that people have the complete wrong focus. There's music, there's art, there's culture.