I'm in 'Madagascar 2.' I'm Testy the Lion. The franchise moves to Africa, and Bernie Mac is also in the film. I loved working for Dreamworks on that film.
Mostly, in The Great Waldo Pepper I remember the lovely Ed Herrmann befriending me and taking care of me. I was crying a lot. I was a real mess when we made that. But this is all such ancient history, Jesus Lord. Was this before or after The Sting?
I worked for Sam Peckinpah on quite a bit of action in his films, and he got excited once in a while.
'She's Gotta Have It' and 'School Daze,' I really didn't know what I was doing. And the biggest indicator of that was the acting. 'Do the Right Thing' was like the first film where I really felt comfortable working with actors.
I learned more doing 'Breakfast at Tiffany's' than I did during three years at drama school.
My relationship with every film is more or less the same, but the experience is the difference. It comes with the people I am working with, the character I play.
I'll never forget watching 'I'm Not There' with Cate Blanchett, because it was the first time she saw the finished film and saw her performance in it. I was sitting next to her experiencing it vicariously through her fresh eyes and hoping she liked it.
Our experience on 'Avatar' heavily influenced how we approached 'The Dragon Prince' and how we built our team.
'Be Cool' was a defining movie for me.
I did 'Celebrity' by Woody Allen. I did 'The Gingerbread Man' with Robert Altman. These were big talents.
One of the great advantages of my time spent in movies and in basically every role possible, both in front of the camera and behind the camera, that I've gotten to see all these different ways that people work and the way movies are constructed from the inside out, from beginning to end.
My experience on 'Jarhead' was life changing.
I'm very used to working with first time actors - you can just look back at 'E.T.' with Drew Barrymore, and Christian Bale from 'Empire of the Sun,' who'd never made a movie before.
'Baby's Day Out' is maybe not a great movie, but... No, I've enjoyed and learned things from every project I've worked on. That was an important step in my career at ILM.
It was fantastic playing Conan; it was such an experience to go out of the country and be this barbaric human savage child for a month or so. It was a blast and definitely a great experience.
Truth be told, actually, my favorite director of the Movie Brats was not Scorsese. Loved him. But my favorite director of the Movie Brats was Brian de Palma. I actually met De Palma right after I'd done 'Reservoir Dogs,' and I was very beside myself.
I was about 19 when I began working for Hindi films.
I loved doing My Favorite Year, which was great fun, and The Ruling Class, which I made with all my chums.
Working with Thiagarajan Kumararaja in 'Super Deluxe' was absolutely mind-blowing.
I haven't directed a film since 'Appaloosa,' and I've been looking for something because I love the directing thing.
I prefer when movies target my heart instead of my mind.
My stated goal as a filmmaker is to feel something. Is to have a palpable emotion in my life, carry it through the gauntlet of the filmmaking process and try and have it land for an audience at some point during the viewing experience. That to me is successful filmmaking.
When we experience a film, we consciously prime ourselves for illusion. Putting aside will and intellect, we make way for it in our imagination. The sequence of pictures plays directly on our feelings.
When I was small, in the early '70s, my mother took me to see 'Cooley High.'
I always loved watching movies because I loved what certain moments inside of films did to me.
