Because there is actually something very interesting in Goodfellas, how the style of the film changes as time goes by and based on the mental state of the protagonist.

We hope to do the Spanish Tragedy based on the play by Thomas Kyd.

Because there is actually something very interesting in Goodfellas, how the style of the film changes as time goes by and based on the mental state of the protagonist.

Shakespeare, who is probably the greatest writer and poet of the English language, lived in a time that was politically very conservative and it's reflected in his writings.

That's my curse, I see the politics within these things and so I don't say yes to them.

So I had the worst experience at the very beginning, and things have been getting better since.

The greatest crime in a Shakespeare play is to murder the king.

I did not find my studies particularly enthralling.

Everybody gets a little dose of Shakespeare. He's the greatest playwright in the English language, but his politics are fairly square.

Sorry, but there is no pleasure in finding new ways of saying the same stuff about projects which tanked.

You'd never have a motorcycle policeman out on the Indian reservation.

I'd love to make another film in Mexico.

And Walker was made with a Mexican crew, although it was shot in Nicaragua.

I'm a good actor in that sense for directors because I always do what they say.

The future is always a dystopia in movies.

I don't think about Hollywood at all.

One of my contemporaries, a colorless chap who worked much harder at his law studies, is now Prime Minister.

The way that a handful of corporations in Los Angeles dictate how our stories are told creates a real poverty of imagination and it's a big problem.

Visual representation of it is essential if we're to come to terms with what it is we've done.

Unfortunately my career began in Hollywood, doing a negative pickup for Universal pictures.

Justin Salinger showed up one day with a pink cowboy hat on and everyone else got really annoyed because somehow he'd managed to get the pink cowboy hat.

In Goodfellas they have this one scene where the camera goes down some steps and walks through a kitchen into a restaurant and the critics were all over this as evidence of the genius of Scorsese and Scorsese is a genius.

The life of a repo man is always intense.

You can't change the system through violence.

It's always nice when the eccentrics show up.

No, I did a film called 'Death and the Compass' as well.

It's interesting actually, what's gone on with that footage, and also what happened with the footage from the war in Afghanistan, is that our news reporting is pretty much along the lines of pornography now.

And it says something about our level of disassociation, that we can provoke these wars abroad but we're not allowed to see people get killed as a result.

Yeah, I'd be happy to go back to Mexico or Japan to make another film.

My best film composing experience was with Elia Kazan.

I was lucky enough to occasionally break out of that racist situation that prevails in the Hollywood film production community. But it was racist then and it will always be that way. It will never be otherwise.

'Batman' took 10 months to film, and by the time I stopped working on it, it took a long time before my English accent came out again. I was actually having to try for it.

Luck is everything... My good luck in life was to be a really frightened person. I'm fortunate to be a coward, to have a low threshold of fear, because a hero couldn't make a good suspense film.

I still feel that a movie has to attempt to say something - even if it fails miserably. But I've sort of given up on believing that I'm going to change the world with every film I choose to act in.

It's the difficulty we had with Mr. Bean, actually, when it went from TV to film. You certainly discover that you need to explain more about a character.

To make a documentary is one thing, to make a feature film is quite another.

I mean when the play was on in New York I was starting to get film offers coming through, and since the film's come out I get offered more than I used to, but it happens incrementally.

I think it would be very boring dramatically to have a film where everybody was a lawyer or doctor and had no faults. To me, the most important thing is to be truthful.

I like doing them and they're ridiculous and the actors can improvise a lot, and they don't have to be really realistic characters that hit a very specific tone as in a feature film. They're really fun, I want to make more of them definitely.

One of the most interesting aspects of the film project was collaborating with so many people - directors, filmmakers, and writers - over a five-year period. I learned that there are two components to this.

The best thing I can think of would be to create a union between something as beautiful and powerful and wonderful as Hollywood films and a criticism of the status quo. That's my dream, to make such a German film.

If he didn't fall in love he would have never come back near the end of the film. Because, what man is going to dishonor himself so that he comes back in front of the man that took a woman away from him... and warns her to save her life?

Robert Altman's Nashville is my all-time favorite film because it covers all the bases - it's original, moving, and has something to say, but also funny and incredibly entertaining.

I never see a novel as a film while I'm writing it. Mostly because novels and films are so different, and I'm such an internal novelist.

I have a movie coming out called Spun, which will be at the Toronto Film Fest.

Well ironically my last three roles have all been a mother. One was a Canadian film where the baby was taken away because she is a drug addict, in Irish Jam I play a mother to a four year old. I think in the future I'll be able to handle the role with a lot more depth.

And when you see it the first time you put the film together, the roughest cut, is when you want to go home and open up your veins and get in a warm tub and just go away. And then it gradually, maybe, works its way back, somewhere toward that spot you were at before.

A good film script should be able to do completely without dialogue.

My advice to young film-makers is this: don't follow trends, start them!