Part of making any endeavour is that each one has its own special problems. It's the nature of the process.
Any film, or to me any creative endeavour, no matter who you're working with, is, in many cases, a wonderful experience.
I can't really envision a time when I'm not shooting something.
If it's a modern-day story dealing with certain ethnic groups, I think I could open up certain scenes for improvisation, while staying within the structure of the script.
Howard Hughes was this visionary who was obsessed with speed and flying like a god... I loved his idea of what filmmaking was.
I think there's only one or two films where I've had all the financial support I needed. All the rest, I wish I'd had the money to shoot another ten days.
The term 'giant' is used too often to describe artists. But in the case of Akira Kurosawa, we have one of the rare instances where the term fits.
Death comes in a flash, and that's the truth of it, the person's gone in less than 24 frames of film.
I don't agree with everything he did in his life, but we're dealing with this Howard Hughes, at this point. And also ultimately the flaw in Howard Hughes, the curse so to speak.
My father had this mythological sense of the old New York, and he used to tell me stories about these old gangs, particularly the Forty Thieves in the Fourth Ward.
I'd like to do a number of films. Westerns. Genre pieces. Maybe another film about Italian Americans where they're not gangsters, just to prove that not all Italians are gangsters.
It did remind me of something out of Greek mythology - the richest king who gets everything he wants, but ultimately his family has a curse on it from the Gods.
If I'm not complaining, I'm not having a good time, hah hah!
If everything moves along and there are no major catastrophes we're basically headed towards holograms.
There must be people who remember World War II and the Holocaust who can help us get out of this rut.
You never know how much time you have left.
I was born in 1942, so I was mainly aware of Howard Hughes' name on RKO Radio Pictures.
The fact that food plays such an important part in my films has everything to do with my family.
I grew up within Italian-American neighborhoods, everybody was coming into the house all the time, kids running around, that sort of stuff, so when I finally got into my own area, so to speak, to make films, I still carried on.
My working-class Italian-American parents didn't go to school, there were no books in the house.