It was never an ambition to grow up and win an Academy Award, so when it happens, you go, 'Weird!'
It's more interesting for me as an audience member to see a movie about a loser.
There's something strange - not in a bad way - about going back to where you grew up or recreating where you grew up. It's strange and stimulating.
We've always actually been remarkably commercially successful. Not in terms of making huge amounts of money, which we rarely do, but in terms of not losing money and making modest amounts of money. We're actually strangely consistent in that respect.
Midwestern Jews is a different community, is a different thing than New York Jews, L.A. Jews. It's just different. It's the whole Midwestern thing.
That cowboy look - the hat and the bandana - that's not a fashion statement. That clothing is purely practical.
Dave Van Ronk, for those who don't know him - probably most don't know - was a folk singer. He's kind of the biggest person on the scene in 1961 in the folk revival in Greenwich Village, biggest person on the scene until Bob Dylan showed up.
Being non-commercial is never an ambition. Movies come together at different points for fortuitous reasons. You do them as you get the opportunity, as opposed to doing them when you choose to or design to.
I have never had feeling in my toes. My uncle, Gen. Norman Schwarzkopf, once told me in confidence he had the same syndrome, leading me to believe it is genetic.
'Once Upon a Time in the West' is a great movie.
We used to watch the muscle movies on Saturday matinees, such as 'Hercules Unchained.' Then we'd go outside and do a remake of it.
'The Big Lebowski' was something we wrote for Jeff Bridges, and we set it aside for a couple of years because he wasn't available.
Of course, 'True Grit' is a Western, but we never considered our film a classical Western and honestly never thought about genre at all. We didn't talk about John Ford or Sergio Leone, even though we like their films. Really, we were driven only by our enthusiasm for Charles Portis's book.
We loved the language in Cormac McCarthy's 'No Country,' which is really about the region, while in 'True Grit' it's more about period: people did speak more formally and floridly.
Oscars just ain't gonna do it for me anymore. I need the Nobel Peace Prize. The Oscars have worn off, man.
Whenever you're specific with ethnicity or religion, people find reason to take offence.
We don't outline, so we don't have prospective tasks to divide up. It's just, we start at the beginning and talk the first scene through, write it up, proceed to the next.
'Barton Fink' owed something to Roman Polanski. As a director, he always goes beyond the obvious narrative drift.
With 'The Big Lebowski,' we were really consciously thinking about doing a Raymond Chandler story, as much as it's about L.A.
People respond to real problems from the heart.
