Quotes

I saw a book in India titled Guide to Film Schools in America, and it shell-shocked me. It changed my life, because I thought you went to college to study something that your father loved and you hated. I told my father I wanted to study film and he said there was no way he was gonna let me do that. I made my way to Los Angeles, and made a film that won a scholarship to the Art Center College of Design. My father thought I was headed for Harvard. I called him and said, 'I want to study film,' and he said, 'You don't exist anymore'.

Anybody in Europe who tries to compete directly with Hollywood will die because they'll just spend more money on it. But things like Hindi cinema have evolved from a different angle, and they've survived because of it. In the west, for example, you don't mix opera and film. If someone is 44 he won't play himself as a 12 or 14-year-old, but he will in a Hindi movie. If he's fat and ugly, people will still call him beautiful. In opera you'd accept that, but you don't accept it in cinema. In the middle of a really serious situation, a dog can have a flashback in a Hindi movie. It is still played seriously, but in the west you wouldn't.

[on being inspired by Sergei Parajanov] I showed Paradjanov to Kodak, and they said, "That's not the kind of thing the new generation would like." Now, I get calls from ad agencies every week saying "we want you to do another commercial just like this."

[on The Fall (2006)] When my brother asked me how much I think the movie cost, I told him for ten years I wasn't going to go into the numbers so I didn't have to sit down and feel bad about the project. At that particular time I just knew that if I didn't get that movie done we would just be a bunch of guys that had money in the bank and we'd always think about the movie we wanted to make. We either make it right now or we don't. It literally was at the correct time at the correct place and I had to make it. It took close to 17 years of location scouting and looking at stuff and having the ideas and finding the people. That kind of project doesn't happen everyday. Maybe you have a couple of them in you. Of course, when we released it after we made the movie, no one wanted the movie. So then I had to work for more money, put another two years of work in to put it in theaters myself and then people like you saw it. Still, it's a very, very polarizing film. It either blows people's minds or it's a very big wank for them. Right now, on the [Rottentomatoes] Tomatometer it isn't even a recommended movie. So that's the kind of definition of cult. It's a polarizing film. You love it or you hate it and I'm OK with both. It's the middle I'm terrified of.[2015]

I shot The Fall (2006) in 28 countries and when I came back, I said, 'Right, next movie nothing shot outside a stage.' Because "The Fall" (2006) doesn't have a thing shot in a stage. Everything was done outside.[2015]