I don't think there's a subject matter that can't absorb 3-D; that can't tolerate the addition of depth as a storytelling technique.
Alcohol decimated the working class and so many people.
All my life, I never really felt comfortable anywhere in New York, except maybe in an apartment somewhere.
The most important thing is, how can I move forward towards something that I can't articulate, that is new in storytelling with moving images and sound?
As a child I had terrible asthma.
I always say that I've been in a bad mood for maybe 35 years now. I try to lighten it up, but that's what comes out when you get me on camera.
The cinema began with a passionate, physical relationship between celluloid and the artists and craftsmen and technicians who handled it, manipulated it, and came to know it the way a lover comes to know every inch of the body of the beloved. No matter where the cinema goes, we cannot afford to lose sight of its beginnings.
Most people have stereo vision, so why belittle that very, very important element of our existence?
I'm sad to see celluloid go, there's no doubt. But, you know, nitrate went, by the way, in 1971. If you ever saw a nitrate print of a silent film and then saw an acetate print, you'd see a big difference, but nobody remembers anymore. The acetate print is what we have. Maybe. Now it's digital.
You gotta understand, when moving images first started, people wanted sound, color, big screen and depth.
I know there were many good policemen who died doing their duty. Some of the cops were even friends of ours. But a cop can go both ways.
The bottom line is, I tend to be going back to older and older music.
People say you should do it this way, someone else suggests that, yes, there's financing, but maybe you should use this actor. And there are the threats, at the end - if you don't do it this way, you'll lose your box office; if you don't do it that way, you'll never get financed again... 35, 40 years of this, you get beat up.
I do know that some Buddhists are able to attain peace of mind.
More personal films, you could make them, but your budgets would be cut down.
I think when you're young and have that first burst of energy and make five or six pictures in a row that tell the stories of all the things in life you want to say... well, maybe those are the films that should have won me the Oscar.
One of the things is that the good intentions of Prohibition, from reading over the years and from becoming obsessed with the research of gangs in New York City, seems to have allowed crime figures at the time, like Luciano, Capone, Torrio and Rothstein, to organize to become more powerful, which pulled all the way through until the '70s.
I think all the great studio filmmakers are dead or no longer working. I don't put myself, my friends, and other contemporary filmmakers in their category. I just see us doing some work.
The Five Points was the toughest street corner in the world. That's how it was known. In fact, Charles Dickens visited it in the 1850s and he said it was worse than anything he'd seen in the East End of London.
Zombies, what are you going to do with them? Just keep chopping them up, shooting at them, shooting at them.
