People say, You paid your dues, but I never paid any dues. It`s always been a great trip.

It`s only been a couple of times in my life that I`ve really locked horns with actors. It did not hurt the films, it just hurt the moment of the filmmaking.

It`s developing a relationship with actors that makes it work.

First cuts are a bitch for a director, because it`s been so many months and you put your trust in your editor and you`re going to see your film assembled for the first time. You look at it and go, This is terrible. I hate it.

If you had the opportunity and some talent, there was no way you couldn`t progress, because it was an open market. There was the advertising world, and there was the documentary world.

I was an actor... or, at least, I was trying to be an actor.

I was very lucky. I started my own commercial company.

I realized what you could do in motion pictures by surrounding yourself with geniuses.

Superman was never previewed because the producers didn`t trust Warners with the film.

It was 1978 when Superman came out, and I kept thinking, Why don`t they do something about it? They`ve done all these crappy attempts at comic book film adaptations. What can we do different? Why don`t we just re-release this thing?

They prepared Superman for a year, and they had the guy flying on a flat board with four wires. What were the challenges? Endless.

In motion pictures, the actor rules. The camera served the actor.

[on Mel Gibson] The most exciting thing that`s come into my life as an actor and a friend. He`s a very special human being.

How was I going to make a man fly? How was I going to convince the public that an actor could fly?

When I went to live television, I loved it. But television was so new and undeveloped that actors had to concede to the equipment.

When I was doing half-hour shows, I loved it and was preparing myself for the hour shows. Then when I did the hour shows, I was preparing myself for the specials and features.

It was just the thrill of a lifetime. Brando and Hackman were two of my heroes.

That`s how you get a performance - they put trust in you.

I`m open to comments. I`m open to objective points of view, because I`ve been very narrow and very subjective.

When you make a film, you like to run it with an audience. They tell you you`re narrow-minded or subjective, or that seems too long, or that doesn`t work.

I was mesmerized by what it would be like for somebody who was a student of history and archeology to go back to a medieval period and really live it.

I had life threats, because people accused me of approaching Brando as God and his son was Jesus. I literally had people saying my blood would run in the streets for doing that.

[on Mel Gibson] Mel Gibson is God`s gift to a director, but he tells the worst jokes in the world.

[Acknowledging Geoffrey Unsworth for developing the photography process that made the flying scenes in the original Superman film possible]: "If it hadn`t been for Geoffrey Unsworth, we wouldn`t have had a movie."

It was the beginning of film for television. So we had all of these great opportunities. Northwestern was probably the only major film school of its kind at the time that was graduating anybody important.

I was really disappointed that Warner Bros. didn`t think highly enough of my film or my filmmaking to ask me to make the new Superman.

With The Omen, I really felt I wasn`t in control. It was panic.

When when my first feature opportunity came along, I wasn`t prepared, but we did it in about 17 days.

Soon it`s all going to be digital anyway. It`s all going to be saved on a little coin somewhere.

I was tweaked by the idea of Superman immediately.

I think what some people are doing with effects is starting to get silly. It`s overused.

I was painting sets, working in editorial as an assistant, driving their trucks, lying that I knew how to drive a truck, and doing commercials and documentaries.

I`ve always wanted to do a Crichton book. I really love his writing.

The Lethals were never done as a special edition, but that`s still a few years away. I`d love to do director`s cuts of all four of them.

Some actors just won`t bend, and then it`s a bitch. You either fight or find ways of putting your words in their mouth and letting them say it back at you.

I worked for a lot of great directors.

Working with Christopher, he convinced me he could fly, and he`s convinced me he`s going to walk again.