Alienation is the most common state of the knowledgeable movie audience, and though it has the peculiar rewards of low connoisseurship, a miser's delight in small favors, we long to be surprised out of it - not to suspension of disbelief nor to a Brechtian kind of alienation, but to pleasure, something a man can call good without self-disgust.

The past has a terror and fascination and a beauty beyond almost anything else. We are looking at the dead, and they move and grin and wave at us; it's an almo…

Audiences who have been forced to wade through the thick middle-class padding of more expensively made movies to get to the action enjoy the nose-thumbing at '…

Watching old movies is like spending an evening with those people next door. They bore us, and we wouldn't go out of our way to see them; we drop in on them be…

I always like to think of the audience when I am directing. Because I am the audience.

Films take me to places I never thought I would get to, and over walls that I never thought I could get over. When I think about that it's just... I dunno... I…

You have a responsibility for the way you make the audience feel, and I want them to feel uncomfortable.