To me, movies and music go hand in hand. When I'm writing a script, one of the first things I do is find the music I'm going to play for the opening sequence.
I've always been interested in giving the audience a first-person experience in my movies.
I like making movies that have some of the qualities of first-person shooter games. That was very important to me for the 'Bourne' franchise.
Movies are a director's medium, and they end up getting less credit than actors. They get the flak if the movie doesn't do well, and the actor walks away with most of the credit if the film does well.
Certain movies like 'Wag The Dog,' we used improv on every scene that we did. Pretty much, we would shoot from the script and then some stuff that we came up with in rehearsal, and then we'd have at least one or two takes where we completely went off the script and just flew by the seat of our pants.
Movies used to be called the 'flicks' because they flickered badly: because 16 or 18 frames a second - which was those hand cranked movies on a single-bladed shutter - was really badly flickering.
I like Telugu movies, then comes Bollywood and then English movies. In Tollywood, I like Mahesh Babu and Prabhas. But no, I don't watch all their movies. I first find out if the movie is nice. If it's a flop, I don't watch it.
When people say they take hits and flops in their stride, I personally feel that they are just lying. Of course, I'm upset when my movies flop. I take it very personally.
There's definitely a luxury to the fluidity of not being a mega-star. I've done a ton of really, really odd, off-the-wall movies. There's this movie I did called 'Queens of Country' a couple of summers ago that is so bananas, and if I was at a certain level, I probably would not have done that movie.
I don't watch the movies I make, so I haven't seen 'Footloose' since it came out. You see this young, hungry actor, it's pretty fun. I was the only one they screen tested. It was an attempt by the director and producer to talk the head of the studio into hiring me because they didn't want me.
What Peter Jackson proved with 'Lord Of The Rings' movies is that you could make various changes, and you could pull things around, but as long as it was in the spirit of the storytelling, and because he made The Shire so real, the fans forgave him for the changes.
One of my favorite movies is The Little Foxes.
I happen to still like really dark, dramatic, fractured characters. They're the reason I got into movies.
100 years ago, movies were black-and-white, silent, and 16 frames a second. So 100 years from now, what are they going to be?
The stuff I'm passionate about is what I write; it isn't multi-million-dollar franchise movies.
Freddy Krueger, that's my boy. He's lean, and he's mean. I like scary movies, and when I had my head shaved, some people thought I looked just like him.
Nowadays the big Hollywood studios only make about three movies a year, and they cost about $200 million each. There's no room for error in that, and not a lot of room, I would think, for free expression.
I like Italian movies. I was frequently there in the '60s, in Rome and the vicinity. It was a great period in life. I was very influenced by their stuff.
I do like escapism. I like going to the movies on a Friday night and seeing something fun.
I just had fun making the movies - just being on set - but I didn't really care about the acting part.
