Everybody thinks making films back to back is a big deal but they did it all the time in the old days.
There was a period of time when they estimated the two biggest stars in Hollywood were Charlie Chaplin and Mickey Mouse.
I watched a lot of Douglas Fairbanks movies. He always played the same role with a mustache. Zorro had a mustache. The Musketeer had a mustache. Tarzan had a mustache.
I used to watch movies - silent movies - and stock companies and theater whenever I could.
I liked the America of Bing Crosby, Charlie Chaplin and Buster Keaton - it was all a dream, of course, but a very alluring dream for a young man from Canton.
The other day in the garage, I found a book report from the seventh grade that I did about silent movie stars. It's funny to look at now, because it really foretold what my future would be.
Sunset Boulevard' is my favorite film.
I suppose they call me a woman's director because there were all these movie queens in the old days, and I directed most of them. But I also directed Jack Barrymore and Ronald Colman and James Stewart, to name a few.
I just want people to remember me like I remember Buster Keaton. When they talk about Buster Keaton or Gene Kelly, people say, 'Ah yes, they good.' Maybe one day, they remember Jackie Chan that way.
Historically, Hollywood comedy has arrived in skinny envelopes. From fence post Buster Keaton to herky-jerky Jerry Lewis to wiry nerve-bundle Woody Allen to hung-loose Richard Pryor to whippy contortionist Jim Carrey, its comics and clowns have tended to be sliced thin and bendable.
Charlie Chaplin, too, through spectacle, contraband certain ideas, put them through, ideas that even today are not being expressed by great statesmen and politicians.
Silent films were, I think, more different than we know to sound films. We think of it as simply that we added dialogue and in actual fact I think it was an entirely different art form.
In our house, the word of Louis B. Mayer became the law.
I'm obsessed with those old romance films. I also would love to venture into the silent film world. I think that's extremely compelling and interesting and really relies on the acting, even more so than when you have an actor speaking.
I've always been a follower of silent movies. I see film as a visual medium with a musical accompaniment, and dialogue is a raft that goes on with it.
I was introducing [director and producer] Hal Roach - Mr. Roach was 100 years old, he was one of the fathers of early days in films, he put Laurel with Hardy, he created the Our Gang kids, and all these silent movies he did - he was a giant.
You know 'Ninotchka?' I recommend it. It's kind of a mess, too. It was before, you know, we got slick editing tools, so it kind of chops along.
I grew up watching Charlie Chaplin and Buster Keaton.
I feel like a survivor from an age that people no longer understand. I want to try to explain what the 1930s - the golden age of Hollywood - was truly like. People forget that America was such a different place then, not yet the dominant force in the world.
When people say 'Charlie Chaplin' I still think now of the guy in the moustache and bowler hat and funny walk - I don't think of an old man who was my grandfather.
I think you have to know these fellows definitely before you can draw them. When you start to caricature a person,you can't do it without knowing the person. Take Laurel and Hardy for example; everybody can see Laurel doing certain things because they know Laurel.
I'm a Hollywood kid, and I know that there are only so many stories. Only so many tales around the campfire that we have to tell. Then we have to regurgitate them. Our grandparents' movies were all remakes of silent films - we forget that, but it's true.
I'm one of those people who says, 'yes, cinema died when they invented sound.'
The movie people would have nothing to do with me until they heard me speak in a Broadway play, then they all wanted to sign me for the silent movies.
Fritz Lang was one of my dearest, dearest friends. I loved working with him.
