Ultimately, with every film I'd done before, there was a reference. They have their own uniqueness, but there was always a precedent.
Nowadays, a critic has to watch 700, 800 films a year, and I know through experience, being a juror in prestigious film festivals where supposedly the best films are arriving, from twenty films maybe you see two that are good, one that is so-so, and one that is extraordinary. And the other sixteen are terrible.
The way I put together images is a reactive art.
Movies become art after editing. Instead of just reproducing reality, they juxtapose images of it. That implies expression; that's art.
In hotels, every time I make a reservation and they never find my name, they never can pronounce it; it's so long, and sometimes they confuse.
When I was about to turn 50, I went into a kind of personal revision and observed my own priorities and what led those priorities in my life. And many things that, in a way, were profound.
When you have a fresh point of view that comes from the right side of the heart, it's just so valuable. You can take it or not take it, but just that perspective can give you a lot of strength or make you reflect on a lot of things.
When I talk about sad things, I talk about sad things.
I'm telling the same story in every film.
To think that we can understand everything is such stupidity because our senses are so limited. We are so limited that to feel that we can understand the creation scientifically is a little bit naive. It's very childish.
My responsibility is to make a film and find my dramatic language; I don't have any political or social responsibility.
I love the three-act theory. It works and works beautifully. But you don't necessarily have to structure a story that way: Cortazar and Borges wrote in different structural styles.
As the camera, I try to subordinate every word to be truthful and honest to each character's context.
I have never met a superhero, but why are we so obsessed with superheroes?
The way America sees Mexico, if they have any sense of it, is like Taco Bell. Our countries are neighbors, and the only hard food to get in America is true Mexican. It's impossible to find, even in L.A. Why is that?
I'm scared of horses, and I don't know how to shoot them, but that's what excites me. After 40 years old, if you don't do some things that really terrify you, I don't think they're worth doing.
As a Third World citizen, I always feel that I need to express my point of view. Sometimes the points of view of Third World countries are never expressed. We don't have that possibility, sometimes, to spread what we feel and how we see things.
In 'A Confession,' Tolstoy found meaning that he could hold on to, and he lived for another 30 years.
I don't know if I have a career or not, or where it ends or it begins. I have been working, doing what I do for a long time. But my creative process has always been so tortuous.
I think the most experimental way to a film is to tell the story the traditional way, because everyone is doing the other thing.