I don't think I'm a total pessimist so I think you can find hope in all my films.

We have three generations at home including my father-in-law. I keep a very low profile and a lot of things I do are very much with the family in mind. I have actually made films with the family around me.

I am at home in many cultures. I live actively in three continents and I've done that for most of my life so I just make films as I see the world and that happens to speak to people. I do things that I want to do.

You earn very little money on independent films and I'm the provider for my home so I do have to think of taking one for the accountant time and again and that means studio pictures.

When I make a film I'm away from home for two to three months. So I want my kids to look at my films one day and say I love his movies I love his choices-because he loved them.

I think they quite like me when I work because I'm one of the safer directors to back because even if my films don't bring their costs in back home once they're shown outside of India they manage to cover the costs.

Why should people go out and pay money to see bad films when they can stay at home and see bad television for nothing?

If I had a choice as to my perfect career I would make a couple of films a year and then concentrate on natural history.

The process of making natural history films is to try to prevent the animal knowing you are there so you get glimpses of a non-human world and that is a transporting thing.

I don't have incredible knowledge about films or of filmmaking history I'm not that kind of person.

As a bookish child in Calcutta I used to thrill to the adventures of bad girls whose pursuit of happiness swept them outside the bounds of social decency. Tess of the d'Urbervilles Emma Bovary and Anna Karenina lived large in my imagination. The naughty girls of Hollywood films flirted and knew how to drive.

A few months after graduation I was working in films. It took off pretty quick.

In feature films the director is God in documentary films God is the director.

My first film as an actor was 'Fast Times at Ridgemont High ' a glorious experience that spoiled me for future films.

The action films I will make in the future will be more believable and character-based. I am now on my second cycle of fame and I want to make films that smell real and are truthful.

It seems like the studios are either making giant blockbusters or really super-small indies. And the mid-level films I grew up on like 'Back to the Future' and all those John Hughes movies the studios aren't doing. It's hard to get them on their feet.

Hollywood films have become a cesspool of formula and it's up to us to try to change it... I feel like a preacher! But it's really true. I feel personally responsible for the future of American cinema. Me personally.

When I was a kid I thought movie stars were women and men who were in these great films that we still look at now. But I don't think there are too many films coming out these days that we're going to look at in the future and say 'This is one of the great ones.'

It's funny: I've been very successful and done a lot of films and I don't really have an agent - I don't really pursue jobs I let people come to me.

I like all Jim Carrey films. They're really funny.

It's funny though with films because you can incorporate a variety of elements and sometimes that can work for you and sometimes I think it can work against you.

Working with Chaplin was very amusing and strange. His films are so funny but working with him I found him to be a very serious man. Whereas the films of Hitchcock are macabre he could be a very funny man to work with always telling jokes and holding court. Of course when I worked with Charlie he was getting older.

When I first envisioned 'Funny Games' in the mid-1990s it was my intention to have an American audience watch the movie. It is a reaction to a certain American cinema its violence its naivety the way American cinema toys with human beings. In many American films violence is made consumable.

'Funny Games' was conceived as a provocation. My other films are different. If people feel my other films are or respond to them as provocation then that's quite different. 'Funny Games' is the only one of mine where my intention was to provoke the audience.