Quotes

If you're going to spend two or three years of your life working on something, you've got to be making the kind of movie that discusses and influences the culture and is engaged in the world you're living in.

[on whether his late release of Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close (2011) was an attempt to ensure Oscar candidacy] It's a movie, not a worm on a hook.

[on Megan Ellison in the leaked Sony emails] ...this bipolar 28 year old lunatic who hasn't returned your call in three days...[2014]

[on Angelina Jolie and her "Cleopatra" project in the leaked Sony emails] I'm not remotely interested in presiding over a $180m ego bath that we both know will be the career-defining debacle for us both. I'm not destroying my career over a minimally talented spoiled brat who thought nothing of shoving this off her plate for eighteen months so she could go direct a movie. I have no desire to be making a movie with her, or anybody, that she runs and that we don't. She's a camp event and a celebrity and that's all and the last thing anybody needs is to make a giant bomb with her that any fool could see coming. We will end up being the laughing stock of our industry and we will deserve it, which is so clearly where this is headed that I cannot believe we are still wasting our time with it. [2014]