I'm highly political. I spend an awful lot of time in the U.S. trying to influence decision-makers. But I don't feel in tune with British politics.

But poetry is a way of language it is not its subject or its maker's background or interests or hobbies or fixations. It is nearer to utterance than history.

My three Ps: passion patience perseverance. You have to do this if you've got to be a filmmaker.

One time I introduced my orchestra as the Shampoo Music Makers instead of the Champagne Music Makers.

We are the music makers. We are the dreamers of the dream.

I think filmmakers want their movies to be seen.

If you look at anybody who's had along career if you look at the choices they've made - even if the movies haven't worked - they've always worked with great filmmakers.

I'm a filmmaker and I'm proud of the movies I've made. But in the background of my life I was also very involved in the creation of the sport.

In movies there are some things the French do that Americans are increasingly incapable of doing. One is honoring the complexities of youth. It's a quiet difficult undertaking requiring subtlety in a filmmaker and perception and patience from us.

The more unique your film is and unusual it is and difficult it is the harder it is to get it financed. That's why a lot of good filmmakers are doing television. They do HBO movies.

When I finally got up to Industrial Light And Magic to work on the 'Star Wars' movies as a model-maker it felt like dying and going to heaven.

I'm not one of those actors where filmmakers that I admire ask me to be in their movies. I meet them at parties and they're nice to me but they never ask me to work with them.

Other filmmakers make their movies and put them out and that's that. For me for some odd reason it goes deeper than that.

In anything I've ever written all the characters sound like me which I don't think is a bad thing. It makes sense. But I had always admired filmmakers who made movies that didn't sound like them at all.

I don't think people have been able to deal with the fact that African American filmmakers can make movies about life and relationships.

If the goal is to get the best artists actors and filmmakers in the world to create the best movies Hollywood does a decent job. And I think no one would disagree with me that it also makes a ton of bad movies and employs a bunch of hacks.

I've been involved with violent movies and then I've also said at a certain point 'I can't take it anymore. Please cut it.' You know you've got to respect the filmmaker and it's a really tough issue.