I don`t know how much movies should entertain. To me, I`m always interested in movies that scar. The thing I love about Jaws (1975) is the fact that I`ve never gone swimming in the ocean again.

I don`t know anything about Academy consideration. I don`t know what an awards movie is.

Directing ain`t about drawing a neat little picture and showing it to the cameraman. I didn`t want to go to film school. I didn`t know what the point was. The fact is, you don`t know what directing is until the sun is setting and you`ve got to get five shots and you`re only going to get two.

I do agree you can`t just make movies three hours long for no apparent reason. For a romantic comedy to be three hours long, that`s longer than most marriages.

I have demons you can`t even imagine.

I don`t want to tell you how to do your job, but somebody has to.

As a director, film is about how you dole out the information so that the audience stays with you when they`re supposed to stay with you, behind you when they`re supposed to stay behind you, and ahead of you when they`re supposed to stay ahead of you.

I went to a place called the Berkley Film Institute for a summer program with a grade school friend of mine, and we just thought it was a joke. It was very impressionist, very Berkley. There were all these people who were there to communicate and change the world, to do all these lofty things -- and then they made these really shitty, stupid little movies. And we were kind of like, "I`m not here for this, I`m just here to pull cable." We were the youngest people there and we ended up being the grips and electrics on everybody else`s movies, and it was pretty good those six or seven weeks, we got to shoot Panaflex cameras and make a married print - it was in black and white and you made these little cheese-ball movies, but at least you were making "something." It was kind of like film school in that way, but those who can`t do, teach, and those who couldn`t teach, taught there. They tried, they just didn`t want to get dirty with it, they didn`t want to get in up to their necks. It was all very patrician."

People will say, `There are a million ways to shoot a scene,` but I don`t think so. I think there`re two, maybe. And the other one is wrong.

Belligerence certainly helps. And there`s a requisite paranoia. There`s fear--fear of failure--and an overwhelming urge to be liked. - [about the personality traits that helps in being a director]

I`m totally anti-commercialism. I would never do commercials where people hold the product by their head and tell you how great it is, I just wouldn`t do that stuff. It`s all inference ... The Levis commercials I did weren`t really about jeans, the Nike commercials weren`t about shoes. The `Instant Karma` spot was some of the better stuff I got offered, and it was never about people going, "Buy this shoe, this shoe will change everything," because I think that`s nonsense. Anybody looking outside themselves to make themselves whole is delusional and probably sick.