I like to direct movies but I don't like to goof around for eight years talking about it.

You can't work in the movies. Movies are all about lighting. Very few filmmakers will concentrate on the story. You get very little rehearsal time so anything you do onscreen is a kind of speed painting.

People need to start to think about the messages that they send in the movies.

I used to love to go to the movies - I'd see two in a row. A few times I even snuck into the second movie after it started... now that I think about it that's kind of like shoplifting! Needless to say I still love going to the movies but I don't sneak in anymore.

What people adore about superhero movies is the signal quality of the Christopher Nolan films - their complete lack of irony when it comes to the portrayal of heroism and the need for heroes to confront evil.

And what I like about it is it makes me happy and I think it makes a lot of people happy to go to the movies and to not think about the problems of the day or the problems of tomorrow or the yesterday and just go on for the ride and have the fun of losing oneself in a fantasy.

If people are constantly reading about you and you're overexposed they've got no reason to go see your movies. Also it's not pleasant or nice to have your privacy invaded.

I think that's what distinguishes Schmidt really. In the movies now so much of what is appealing to an audience is the dramatic or has to do with science fiction and Schmidt is simply human. There's no melodrama there's no device It's just about a human being.

I have a lot of repression. So repression is what I make movies about.

When we talk about how movies used to be made it was over 100 years of film literal physical film with emulsion that we would expose to light and we would get pictures.

Even the worst Bond movies there's something to love about them.

I was always raised on cowboy films and then when I could start making choices about the movies I wanted to watch I found myself wanting to watch gangster films which were slightly more sophisticated than the baseline stuff that was in westerns.

I'd maybe done about 12 movies when I decided that this was what I was going to do.

Not only do I have to live right I have to get some cash for my troubles - it's a scary thing and people need to start to think about the messages that they send in the movies.

My dream role would probably be a psycho killer because the whole thing I love about movies is that you get to do things you could never do in real life and that would be my way of vicariously experiencing being a psycho killer. Also it's incredibly romantic.

Movies are not about the weekend that they're released and in the grand scheme of things that's probably the most unimportant time of a film's life.

I wanted to do another movie that could make us laugh and cry and feel good about the world. I wanted to do something else that could make us smile. This is a time when we need to smile more and Hollywood movies are supposed to do that for people in difficult times.

Somebody asked me about the current choice we're being given in the presidential election. I said Well it's like two of the scariest movies I can imagine.

Movies are all about plot. Theater even if it's story heavy it's about ideas.

When you make a film you usually make a film about an idea.

There's an electrical thing about movies.

I don't think you should feel about a film. You should feel about a woman not a movie. You can't kiss a movie.

Even if I set out to make a film about a fillet of sole it would be about me.

A lot of movies are about life mine are like a slice of cake.