Quotes

It was impossible to make a film without a movie star, but it's very difficult to find a part you can cast one in that doesn't seem like miscasting.

Making movies is hard. If you can avoid working you should do it. Ridley [Scott] can't take more than two weeks between movies or he starts going bananas. I don't understand those guys at all. You have to get up at five o'clock in the morning, it's political, and you feel like you're failing 90 per cent of the time. It's a tough job.

The first movie I remember seeing is The Wizard of Oz, which had a big impact on me. It's a funny one, because The Wizard of Oz is like an authorless text, because there were four directors that worked on the picture, but it's a really amazing film, even to this day. I've been affected by many films: I think I liked Planet of the Apes movies when I was a kid, and then when I was around 14 I discovered art movies like Kurosawa and Ingmar Bergman and 8 ½ and I thought that was all pretty cool, and then I got into Roman Polanski, and then it was Martin Scorsese and David Lynch, and then Terry Malick and-there's just so many of them, so many good movies. It wasn't like I saw 2001 [A Space Odyssey] and thought, "I have to be a filmmaker," or anything like that. It took me six go's at 2001 until I suddenly realized it was a masterpiece-I always thought it was dull-and then I saw a 70mm print of it, and it was the most extraordinary experience.

[when asked if he would like to make more films] I would be, if I had the money for them. I'd make movie after movie after movie, if I had my way.

[on why he wishes to direct Blonde (2022)] I think that Blonde will be one of the ten best movies ever made. That's why I want to do it.

[on why he thinks Blonde (2022) will be one of the best films ever made] It's a film about the human condition. It tells the story of how a childhood trauma shapes an adult who's split between a public and a private self. It's basically the story of every human being, but it's using a certain sense of association that we have with something very familiar, just through media exposure. It takes all of those things and turns the meanings of them inside out, according to how she feels, which is basically how we live. It's how we all operate in the world. It just seems to me to be very resonant. I think the project has got a lot of really exciting possibilities, in terms of what can be done, cinematically.

Terrence's movies aren't slow. I think it's a mistake. People think of Terry Malick movies as slow, but they're not. They are cut really fast. They don't have a lot of dialogue. People say it's like a Terry Malick movie, but I don't really think like it is.

Nick [Cave] and Warren [Ellis] are both the same and completely different at the same time. There's a fearlessness about dealing with the unknown, both in life and creatively, a willingness to place themselves in situations where they're vulnerable and a belief in the strength of that.