I was studying with Stella Adler, who was a great, great teacher who encouraged me to be an actor. I had thought I would just write or direct or whatever. I wasn't thinking very much of Hollywood. I was thinking only of the legitimate theatre. But then I changed.
There's almost nothing that hasn't been said about me. But there's an awful lot that I haven't said. I don't talk about private things.
I sometimes feel I have met everyone he ever met, but I never met him. I am afraid to say I have always been - the word I would have to use is - amused by Howard Hughes.
By attracting attention to yourself, you distract people from the movie. Ideally, you like a movie to speak for itself. You don't describe a song before you sing it or tell about a painting before you show it. You don't reveal the recipe before you serve the dish. You taste it.
When I came to Hollywood, I would take the opportunity to get to know George Stevens or Willy Wyler or Billy Wilder or Freddie Zinnemann. David Lean I got to know, of course, in London. And David Selznick and Darryl Zanuck, not to mention Jack Warner, and Sam Goldwyn was actually very, very nice to me.
I actually knew Adlai Stevenson and Jack and Bobby Kennedy.
For years, Warner Bros. was trying to get me to make a movie about Howard Hughes.
I'd rather ride down the street on a camel than give what is sometimes called an 'in-depth' interview.
I have a day job. I can make movies when I want to.
Lenin said that people vote with their feet. Well, that's what's happening. They either go, or they don't go. It's all politics. It's all demographics.
And then the conditions of safety - or lack of safety - for teachers in public schools, and the disparity between public schools and private schools is shameful.
Invented memory is a subject that fascinates me.
I don't want to run for governor, but I don't think anyone should put public service out of the question because that's not what a good citizen does.
If I had done some of the movies that I was offered as an actor - and very good movies, by the way, and some of them big moneymakers - I don't know that I ever would have taken what was the concentration or the time to do the movies that I produced. 'Reds' is a good example, but 'Shampoo' is also an example, and so was 'Heaven Can Wait.'
I think I've been lucky enough not to have to do movie after movie after movie for financial reasons, so I've been able to live life and also make movies. I didn't have to grind them out. I could go long periods where I was living life rather than tripping over cables.
When you mutilate movies for mass media, you tamper with the hearts and minds of America.
For me, the highest level of sexual excitement is in a monogamous relationship.
Marriage requires a special talent, like acting. Monogamy requires genius.
Being here allows me to make the case that not all aging, narcissistic movie actors whose children could be mistaken for their grandchildren necessarily act with the same motivation.
Building a house is a lot like moviemaking. The attention to detail, the sense that you're doing something that has longevity.
