ALFONSO CUARON

I'm interested in new worlds, new universes, new challenges. I always said the only reason to make a film is not for the result but for what you learn for the next one.

Cautionary tales were fantastic in the '70s.

The reason I like tracking shots has to do more with a sense of real time than anything else. In 'Gravity,' the use of tracking - of long extended takes - was partially because we wanted to film it like an IMAX-style Discovery Channel documentary. You don't have the luxury of cuts when you're in space. The camera is there; you're just observing.

I have to confess that I don't read much of what is written about me.

I left Mexico for artistic survival. If I had stayed, I would have been forced by the government, who control the movie business, to direct TV shows or commercials or infomercials for the government.

'Y Tu Mama Tambien' is one of the first unrated movies to be nominated for an Academy Award for Best Original Screenplay. But many video stores won't take a movie that's not rated, so I had to make the movie an R.

Most people just half-watch TV. They watch TV while they are doing many other things in the environment of their home. So, what they are doing goes through their ears as much as through their eyes. In television, the narrative and characters are in the foreground of everything, because you are watching TV as you do other stuff.

If you want to keep on being relevant as a director, I think you have to embrace the times. And with the times come technologies and formats.

I think it is something that is so important, to be very aware of the direction in which the 21st century is going with all this blind faith in democracy. And by the way, I am not against democracy - I am against the blind faith that is being put in democracy.

A lot of the films I like are more than fantasies - they're movies fascinated by the technology of space exploration, and they try to honor the laws of physics. I watched the Gregory Peck movie 'Marooned' over and over when I was a kid.

The amazing thing is that the more money it takes for a movie to get made, the more you feel like everybody wants you to fail.

When you're doing a film, narrative is your most important tool, but it's a tool to create a cinematographic experience, to create those moments that are beyond narrative, that are almost an abstraction of that moment that hits your psyche.

Space fascinated me because I'm from the generation that saw Neil Armstrong walk on the moon live on TV. I was 7 at the time. Also, 'Lost in Space' was one of my favorite shows on TV back then.

I guess I have a short attention span! I'm interested in new worlds, new universes, new challenges.

Experiencing this film in 2-D is only getting about 20 percent of the experience of 'Gravity.'

I used to be very controlling with visuals and editing, and I would pretty much craft the performances; now I have learned to trust the material and the actors.

I produce the way I would love to be produced: In ways to create the best conditions to make your movie, but also to create a space in which the director calls the shots.

I was not aware of how much I loved 'Canoa' until I saw it after doing 'Y Tu Mama Tambien' and realized that my voice - over about the story's historical context - that narrator - came from 'Canoa'.

The two real leads in 'Children of Men' are Clive Owen and the social environment. You know, this same movie without the social environment maybe is just like a generic chase movie.

In 'Gravity,' nearly everything is a metaphor for the main character. The way I tend to approach a film is that character and background are equally important; one informs the other. Here, Sandra Bullock is caught between Earth and the void of the universe, just floating there in between. We use the debris as a metaphor for adversity.

I have this thing that, once I finish a movie, I never see it again.

It's a cliche, but Americans are puritanical. In their movies, they are scared of sex, but they overindulge in violence. I could have cut a G-rated version of 'Y Tu Mama Tambien' that would have pleased the American ratings board, but it would have been five minutes long.

When you strip hope from people, it leaves a void, and that void needs to be filled. And very likely, that void is going to be filled by an ideology... Hope and faith are so connected. Now, when ideology connects with faith, the ideology becomes an item of faith, not a point of discussion.

It's seldom that you find great moments in television. Usually you remember - in 'Breaking Bad' or any of these other great shows - you remember situations or characters. Not moments. But I have to say, I can make the same argument for mainstream movies, which have bad narratives and also no memorable moments.

I knew early on that I was a nerd and that films were my refuge. Those first few minutes before the lights went off, and you're alone in the theater waiting, were really pleasurable.