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.

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.

I became hooked on the idea of being able to shoot an image and process it myself, and end up with a product.

At the end, the realization is that she had to get to a place in her life where she could drop her guard and make peace with the fact that whether she had a small amount of time, that she had to kind of live it completely through, instead of living by the rules.

All enterprises that are entered into with indiscreet zeal may be pursued with great vigor at first, but are sure to collapse in the end.

I don't write drafts. I write from the beginning to the end, and when it's finished, it's done.

Young actors often don't think of the consequences of doing nudity or sex scenes. They want the role so badly that they agree to be exploited, and then end up embarrassing family, friends, and even strangers.

They haul you up there for, you know, week after week in this kind of star chamber proceeding. Then at the end of it they say, well, we found nothing, but now it's time for special counsel.

The difference between talking on your cell phone while driving and speaking with a passenger is huge. The person on the other end of the cell phone is chattering away, oblivious.

Madame, all stories, if continued far enough, end in death, and he is no true-story teller who would keep that from you.

The big battle at the end of DW isn't drawn from history, but it's influenced by history, certainly.

Every new beginning comes from some other beginning's end.

I did know that the book would end with a mind-boggling trial, but I didn't know exactly how it would turn out. I like a little suspense when I am writing, too.

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?

Every sentence has a truth waiting at the end of it and the writer learns how to know it when he finally gets there.

Pacifist propaganda and the resolutions of the parliamentarians encouraged such treaties, and toward the end of the nineteenth century their number had increased considerably.

Will Arnett is one of the funniest guys I know. He has seen it all and done it all and come out the other end pretty savvy and pretty strong.