For many years I enjoyed the pleasure of cruising on my yacht all summer long and these were my best holidays. In mid-May, we'd start in St Tropez. I'd collect my bikinis from my home there and then we'd go up to Cannes for the Film Festival, on to Monte Carlo for the Grand Prix and then to Italy.

The secret to the movie business, or any business, is to get a good education in a subject besides film - whether it's history, psychology, economics, or architecture - so you have something to make a movie about. All the skill in the world isn't going to help you unless you have something to say.

It always seems that the generation below you is getting worse, which is why I had the worst character in the film Adulthood that said it. I don't remember speaking to my elders like that, because you never remember... actually our generation was quite bad because everyone else always seems worse.

I want to be involved in things I can be really proud of. There's a lot of bad films being made and I don't understand how they got the money for it. That said, there's a lot of bad telly, but there's also a lot of very high quality that is something I'd be much more proud of than a mediocre film.

'Pulp Fiction' was probably one of the first films I ever saw that really kind of took effect on me. I was about four years old - obviously wasn't supposed to be seeing that film; my sister kind of sneaked it out and we got to see it. She's older than me. That was something I always used to watch.

It was no accident that I made 'Hoop Dreams' because it concerned a sport that I loved and hoped would be my dream, however far-fetched that turned out to be. Because of the success of that film, Hollywood pigeonholed me as a sports biopic guy, which led to 'Prefontaine' and two cable sports films.

I got expelled from high school, and then did my exams from home. I decided, through that experience, that I was going to expediate my plan and didn't go to university. Instead, I went to a community college and studied the theory and history of film with the idea that I wanted to write and direct.

I really like the George Clooney of Solaris also filmed by Andrei Tarkovsky, before Steven Soderbergh: that's very obviously sci-fi, and it seems to me a great film. But whatever pigeon-hole you put Stalker into you would both be increasing the risk of disappointing people and diminishing the film.

Jokes apart, people are constantly asking me, 'What are you doing for the industry?' When one makes a blockbuster, you plough back money into the industry. If my film makes 100 crore, I'm not taking the entire sum home! It gets distributed between the exhibitors, distributors, producers and actors.

'Fast Times At Ridgemont High' is one of my favorite movies; it's a film that's a human comedy, it's a drama, and the characters all, in a way, fit the teenage archetypes, but they don't become stereotypes because each of the actors brought their own presence and their own personality to the screen.

I live in Surrey, but up until the age of eight I lived in London. And the way I heard about this 'Peter Pan' film was there was an open-call audition that I'd heard about, or read about, and I just thought, 'Oh, I'll go along for the fun.' Because I never dreamed in a million years I'd ever get it.

I don't want to be a grumpy old man or too pessimistic, because if I have a chance, I would prefer to watch a film in the cinema with an audience on a big screen instead of watching it on a cell phone. It's a very different experience, but somehow I think this form will have its own future and life.

'Brave New World' dealt with a kind of proto-genetic engineering of the unborn, through really, as many dystopias do, it dealt with totalitarianism. The 1997 film 'Gattaca' updated 'Brave New World,' bringing us to a future where genetic testing determined your job, your wealth, your status in life.

The true treasure lies within. It is the underlying theme of the songs we sing, the shows we watch and the books we read. It is woven into the Psalms of the Bible, the ballads of the Beatles and practically every Bollywood film ever made. What is that treasure? Love. Love is the nature of the Divine.

The process always starts with detailed conversations with the director, followed by a spotting session (deciding where the music goes and doesn't go in the film, and what the music should be saying or not saying) in each scene. This is followed by sending the director demos of each cue for feedback.

When 'Pizza' released, I was a nobody. Initially, we managed to get only 100 screens. But, after its success, the producers of 'Naduvula Konjam Pakkatha Kaanom' got 150 screens and also released the film in the U.S. Now, distributors are keen to invest in my films because they feel I have face value.

I always work only with friends, but it must be about them and myself. Because I film only very personal moments, nothing preplanned, staged or written, it has to be real and spontaneous. Some of them have become famous, some are not yet famous, some will never be famous. But they are all my friends.

I naively thought I was making a low-budget movie. But, when the film came out, the Daily Variety reviewer at that time who was named Art Murphy described it as an exploitation film. I had never heard that term before. Roger never used it. So that's how I learned that I had made an exploitation film.

When I make a film, I am hoping to reinvent the genre a little bit. I just do it my way. I make my own little Quentin versions of them... I consider myself a student of cinema. It's almost like I am going for my professorship in cinema, and the day I die is the day I graduate. It is a lifelong study.

'Battle: Los Angeles' - I've got to say this was easily one of the most physically trying things that I've ever done in my life because I play a Marine in the film, and they had us training with real live Marines for, like, three weeks. It gave me a whole new respect for just the armed forces, period.

A few years ago you couldn't go from TV to film. It was like a 'no no' but I believe when you find a plan and purpose that God has for your life, there's not anything man can do to you. Especially when your faith is not really standing in the wisdom of man, you're really standing in the wisdom of God.

The think that we hung the film version all on was 'Hedwig' on tour. On stage, it's one theatre, one show. It just seemed natural to change it. In the film, we were able to go to flashback rather than have her talk to the audience. And we had the play to practice and to see where we had made mistakes.

I first started making films - this is my first feature, but I was making shorts - I was actually freelancing as a day job at The New York Times as an art director. I actually worked with Bill Cunningham and really soon after I met him, I thought, "Oh my God, he's a perfect subject for a documentary."

I stopped watching horror movies after I watched 'Candyman' when I was - I don't know, fifteen or something. I remember my sister rented it, 'Candyman,' and it really, really scared me. And so it was only after I found myself in a horror film that I really went back and kind of rediscovered the genre.

Our idea to remake the Malayalam 'Premam' was not to make a better film than the original film or correct the mistakes they made or perform better than that hero. The soul of the Malayalam movie was taken and changed a bit to match with the Telugu sensibilities so that our audience can enjoy the movie.

The concept of a midlife crisis is a well known one perpetuated by books and films. And recently the idea of a quarter-life crisis, between 20 and 30, has also gained a fair amount of media coverage. But there's a surprising lack of robust research on these events, and almost none on later life crisis.

I quite like that people tend not to know my name. I remember being at the Cannes film festival for 'All or Nothing.' I looked very different in the film - I had a little greasy bob and no makeup. I went to a dinner after the screening, and everyone completely ignored me. I got a real buzz out of that.

The Movie is something that I made with some friends of mine in L.A. My friend, Luke Eberl, is the filmmaker. He shot this movie and asked a bunch of his friends to be involved with it. I just saw him the other day and there is no money to finish the film. But, you know, I literally have a cameo in it.

You have to go with your instincts. I remember when I was about to make "Fistful of Dollars" a big article came out that said, "Italian Westerns are finished." I said, "Swell." Then, of course, the film came out, and it did something. I'm so glad for the dozens of times I haven't listened along the way.

I have songs that define characters from each film of mine. It can be a song from that particular film or something that just goes with the wavelength of the film; you listen to it, and it gives you that rhythm. I can't articulate how it helps, but it somehow gives you an understanding of the character.

I can't tell you why I choose stuff, it's really something I don't analyse. The only thing I can say is that a film has to demand to be made, I don't have a plan of what films I'm going to make. The only thing that I know now is that I'm not too crazy about doing things again that I've been into before.

It gave me a lot of pleasure and pride that 90 percent of the crew for 'Monsoon Wedding,' and most of my film, are women. We get the work done, you know, much lesser play of ego... And I really believe in harmony, I believe in working in a spirit of egolessness and that the film is bigger than all of us.

I like stories that begin with characters. I like to be engaged and moved by the characters in the story. I want to be moved. I want to leave the cinema and think about what I've seen. My sensibility is quite eclectic and it doesn't matter if they are small or large films, I just want to make good films.

'Station to Station' came out of a sense of urgency - a sense that culture, be it art, film or architecture, has become so compartmentalised. For this project, we wanted to break that and create a language that is more nomadic and less materialistic and really empowering for the creators and the audience.

The film is made in the editing room. The shooting of the film is about shopping, almost. It's like going to get all the ingredients together, and you've got to make sure before you leave the store that you got all the ingredients. And then you take those ingredients and you can make a good cake - or not.

I do like ensemble work. I would like to do a lead role, though. I didn't shy away from that. I'm desperately looking for a lead role to do in a film, an independent film, and it just hasn't come my way yet. I'm desperately looking for that role that will put me in a lead category. Or a television series.

They said, "You get $2 million to make the film, if you're not in it. If you are in it, you get $5 million to make the film." There was no way to make the thing for $2 million, so I made it for $5 million. And then, it turned out there was no way to make the thing for $5 million. That's when it got weird.

What's great is that each medium has a unique set of things that it does and does well. Film is a visual medium, and obviously, you can't fit a whole book into two hours unless you're really economical about it. Obviously, they say a picture is worth a thousand words, and on some level, it's sort of true.

It was great. I got to hang out with him [Martin Freeman as Bilbo Baggins], and I kept a straight face for a bit and then I started giggling because I know Martin, I don't know Bilbo. For Martin to be sitting there playing Bilbo is amazing. He's going to be amazing, he's going to be fantastic in this film.

Film has to be reflecting the world that we live in, and that's all you want to be a part of. Actors inhabit the same planet as everyone else. It's a weird thing that happens when you're an actor because people hold you up because you somehow embody in parts groups of people or people's hopes or something.

I didn't know the term 'synesthesia' until I was working on 'Cruel Summer.' Halfway into writing that, I really understood that, my entire life, I had been trying to describe this condition of mine: through painting, through this seven-screen Surround Vision film we shot in Qatar, through all these things.

Priyadarshan has directed over 84 films and more than 150 ad films. With every film, he is growing. He knows his job well; he is thorough. His way of making a film and song or choreographing a scene is entirely different from other directors. He knows how to use an actor's talent and how to handle an actor.

People look at film in a gallery, and if they walk out after two minutes they know they haven't seen the whole work. But then people look at a painting for two minutes and think they've seen it. Certain paintings are made to be consumed fast. But some require a slowed-down time. You have to go back to them.

Until film is just as easily accessible as a pen or pencil, then it's not completely an art form. In painting, you can just pick up a piece of chalk, a stick, or whatever. In sculpture, you can get a rock. Writing, you just need a pencil and paper. Film has been a very elitist medium. It costs so much money.

My favorite - my very favorite movie, which I suppose is a bit of a guilty pleasure in that it's like, you know, every scene, you know, pushes every button, is 'True Romance' directed by Tony Scott with Patricia Arquette and Christian Slater, and it's a fantastic, fantastic film, very violent, very romantic.

My first movie was this independent that I did on the Erie Canal in 1995, called Erie, that I don't know if you could even get, actually with Felicity Huffman. And then from that I did this film that was eventually called The Broken Giant later that fall. And then I kind of started getting into doing pilots.

The dream would be to work with my two favorite actors, Daniel Day Lewis and Cate Blanchett. Or playing Joaquin Phoenix's brother in a film. Basically anything where I get to act opposite actors like these; ones who bring a certain caliber to their work and literally morph into the character they are playing.

If you're an artist working in China, you become aware that there are things you have to give up in order to practice your art. For the most part, you know what they are. With my first three films, the consequences of making them was that I had to forgo the possibility of releasing them theatrically in China.

I've been working in television for so long, since 2004, and I just worked nonstop throughout that time and I've learned so much. I've definitely done that 10,000 hours. I know the format really well and I feel comfortable in it. I'm excited about going into something I'm not so comfortable in, which is film.

I just got on Twitter because there was some MTV film blog that quoted me on something really innocuous that I supposedly said on Twitter before I was even on Twitter. So then I had to get on Twitter to say: 'This is me. I'm on Twitter. If there's somebody else saying that they're me on Twitter, they're not.'

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