I mean, the old film critics just excoriated me.

No, you're either born a writer, a storyteller, or you're not.

I became a loner. I became a mountain man. A lot of those things are very good qualities and they help you do your work, help you be singular and keep the artistic integrity of your work intact, but they don't make it very easy to live your life.

I've always been able to survive by writing, though.

There is a certain kind of respect for authenticity today that there wasn't back in the days when they did 'Cleopatra,' where everything looked like a giant motel. People want to have it be authentic in the look, and authentic in the way people behave.

I find that screenwriting is at best kind of a hackwork in some ways.

I've always had trouble with authority.

Yeah, I think that's it... It's like Jesse James. He became really popular because he lasted so long. You know, there is some degree of truth to the fact that time will dignify anything, too.

Most artists think they're frauds anyway.

Egotism is not a good quality. It's not something to be admired or even tolerated. It wouldn't be tolerated in a field commander and it shouldn't be tolerated in a movie director.

Yeah, there's absolutely. I mean, remember when The Searchers came out, it was a relatively big hit for a Western, and I think it made 5 million bucks - I don't even think it made that.

I felt that the Star Wars series became very pretentious as time went on. Just heavy and leaden.

I suppose when I started out I would have liked to have been the darling of critics or something, but everybody wants to be loved and admired.

I think Francis at half form is better than anybody else by 50%, you know? I think it's just that he has never... he has a late pick of the things that are ambitious enough for him.

You never know when you're going to be considered un-hip... The people that really pass judgment on you really have nothing to do with what you do, usually.

Everybody's a filmmaker today.

Most of the good executives do pretty well. Because to be a good executive you have to be strong, and you have to have a simple attribute that people have forgotten about - courage.

Writing requires a great deal of skill, just like painting does. People don't want to learn those skills.

I hardly said a word to my wife until I said 'yes' to divorce.

Also, they don't understand - writing is language. The use of language. The language to create image, the language to create drama. It requires a skill of learning how to use language.

'm a general, I do something. I go out and fight wars and win them.

A lot of directors don't know what they want to do. Every director I've seen that was a good director that I've admired knew exactly what he wanted to do. They didn't sit there and think about it.

Matter of fact, the style that people use today, I invented in a way.

I also thought of myself as the Sonny Barger of the film industry.

A lot of people thought of me as a threat to Western civilization.

You know, I find it very strange when movies that I made that were just excoriated - I mean that I was just vilified for - are now looked at as classics.

The filmmakers always have a great level of control.

Films are always pretentious. There's nothing more pretentious than a filmmaker.

I mean, the old film critics just excoriated me.

I suppose when I started out I would have liked to have been the darling of critics or something but everybody wants to be loved and admired.

Films are always pretentious. Theres nothing more pretentious than a filmmaker.

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.