Film schools didn't exist when I was growing up. I learned by working with clever people. Good writers and cinematographers.

This black hole that people talk about in my career in the '70s, when I didn't make any films - in retrospect, what I was doing was learning my job.

As a director, my job is to protect. I protect scripts, actors, cameramen, designers.

I've always found poverty a source of strength.

Best thing for a government to do is to eliminate obstacles like filing registrations, getting licences, and so on... tedious steps slow everything down.

If you say simply that pressures toward democracy are created by the market, I would say yes.

If you work for the federal government, the average salary is $7,000 higher than the private sector. Something's wrong with that, when you're making more money working for the government than you can working in the private sector.

When you turn 18 in the United States, you should be automatically registered to vote. Ideally, this sensible reform would be a federal law affecting all 50 states, Washington, D.C., and American territories, but our federal government stopped being sensible a very long time ago.