Three years after starting, by physically doing everything from raising the finance to special effects, we'd finally cobbled together our low budget film.

We cheer everyone who goes off to Hollywood and tells American stories but telling Australian stories is the greatest thing you can do.

There are a thousand weird untold stories in the Australian film industry, this has been one of them.

Can you imagine what it would be like if all the Aussie film talent was able to make Australian stories?

The obsession required to see a feature through from concept to release is not a rational thing to do with your brief time on this planet. Nor is it something to which an intelligent person should aspire.

So we have to be careful because if you don't protect your culture you won't have it for very long.

Australians don't have a preconceived notion of what things have to be... we can go on a fantastic journey.

My background was art school, documentary director and surfer with a keen interest in thrilling acts of life threatening stupidity.

I kind of worry about that a little bit - we lost our film culture for 30 years because the Americans came in and bought up all the cinema chains and wouldn't show any Australian films.

Three years after starting, by physically doing everything from raising the finance to special effects, we'd finally cobbled together our low budget film.

You go overseas and people are oppressed and scared and worried but we're not like that... we're more like my films and how people come out at the end of seeing them - they feel good.

While the eyes of the world will be on us let's show everyone that we have a great sense of humour.

It was always easy for me. I was born very rich and lucky.

Find your own specific voice in filmmaking and go for it. Either people will get it or they won't and that's what it's all about.

It's because we are so flooded with American culture that we're startled when we see ourselves up there on the screen.

Hollywood is horrible... it's beyond satire.

We've got so many stories to tell, you know, we could take on the world.

Movies are usually difficult, often insane, constantly challenging and always strangely amusing to make.

It's an infinite creative universe to explore so why chase conservative options?

All the jokes in my films, the comedy, they're not me, I just try to hold a big mirror up to us.

I just wanted to do this all Australian film and we didn't want to give creative control to overseas 'cause whoever comes on my sets, whether you're sweeping the floor or an actor, it doesn't matter who comes up with the ideas, it's a collaboration.

I support all Australian films.

Now both my films have been number one at the Australian box office and it took about two years just to get the finance for this film, so if it's hard for me then God help everyone else.

In a kind of a way there's a bit of that happening now so we have to be careful to preserve our culture.

I don't know what it means to be out there against the Olympics.

In 1905 Albert discovered Relativity, in 1906 he invented Rock and Roll.

Movies are a complicated collision of literature, theatre, music and all the visual arts.

Then if your movie clicks with real audiences, you'll be sucked into some sort of Hollywood orbit. It's a devil of a place where the only religion that really counts is box office.

Making your first feature film is actually impossible.

We live in a time where government is not a leadership thing, it's more a business that's out there and running riot, so I guess the people have to go out there and say stuff.

The journey of your first movie is not just beyond belief it can be truly beyond satire.

Getting your screenplay right is the most important thing you'll ever do on your film.

If government and media and all of us in the Australian tribe got together, and the rock industry, we'd just be the greatest cultural force the world has ever seen - we're such an amazing race.

The American formula things are out there but they don't have any stories to tell - we have all the stories to tell - but they're all formula.

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.