You always want your movies to reach the widest audience possible.
I could watch 'There Will Be Blood' all day long, and Daniel Plainview is a terrible person - but he's still compelling to watch. That's what makes me want to engage and see what happens next.
I was mesmerised by South cinema and the kind of work is done out here.
Westerns are very difficult to predict whether they'll reach an audience or not.
My low-budget films, more than anything, taught me that you've got to create cool, likable characters and great stories because, if you don't, it doesn't matter how cool it might look - no one is going to care about it.
Cinema which is well-made, for any kind of audience, is worthy of being watched by just about anybody who would like to watch a good story being told.
New York is the greatest character actor ever. Any film that is shot in New York is elevated by the city.
With literary fiction, generally a film maker falls in love with a book. In commercial fiction, it's a producer or studio falling in love with a book they can make into a movie with worldwide appeal.
It is not enough for a movie to be righteous. It must also be watchable.
I would never stop watching film. The reason why I say I like the old ones is I like the subject matter better. I thought they had more variety to them, they had more romantic comedies and things that appealed to me more.
I'd get bored if I... if I had to do a movie, and there was no love story in it, I would just be bored. I mean, I would do it, but it would be kind of boring.
Me, as a moviegoer, before being a filmmaker, I try to think about what movie I would like to see.
The wonderful thing about films is how they can be understood by so many different people on so many different levels.
If I could film, we'd film every episode of 'Doctor Who' in New York. I have an affinity with the city. It has some wonderful locations and it is devastatingly vast and huge. Central Park looks amazing on camera.
Our job is to make films that are inherently global and can really stand up to the audience litmus test of, 'Is it worth getting in my car, spending the money, and going to the theater?'
What I'm realizing as I get older is that a movie's mainstream success is just as unpredictable as a movie's cult success. Plenty of movies that are truly odd and deserve cults, don't have cults. It's just as much of a crapshoot to be a cult hit as it is to be a mainstream success. Isn't that weird?
Well, I think one of the reasons Chicago became so popular as a filmmaker location is because New York had been used so many times that Chicago, I think, was rediscovered maybe in the late '60s, early '70s for a long time as a new location.
My past films came out on home entertainment in the U.S., so the next question was, how do we get a theatrical in the U.S.? Well, you put a monster in it. That will do it, because people love monster movies.
I want to make films that cater to the world audiences.
It doesn't matter how big the film is - if the story is not good, it will not be accepted. Stardom can maybe pull audiences to theatres but beyond that it is all about content.
I feel like movies when they work they'll find an audience.
Is this film more interesting than a documentary of the same actors having lunch?
I saw 'Brooklyn' so many times.
I'm always a little skeptical when I hear people promoting a film and they say it has something for everyone.
If the script is boring when I read it, I am sure it would be boring onscreen, too.
