Independent cinema is more thoughtful, delicate. While Western blockbusters can have their own kind of delicateness, it's not delicate enough. You have to be ready to compromise to enter that field. I will do so only if it's worth it.
One of the nicest things I ever read about our show was that a critic felt 'Boardwalk Empire' could be the beginning of the blur between television and cinema, because the production values are so high and the storytelling is so compelling.
When I listen to a basic thought, I try to visualise the cinema in it. Sometimes it is dark, sometimes boyish, sometimes amateurish. It is a trial and error method. But the bottom line is that I want to entertain the audience.
Cinema in India is like brushing your teeth in the morning. You can't escape it.
How can the country that created electricity, the light bulb, modern cinema as we know it, and the Oscar Meyer Weenie Whistle not be purely awesome?
I am more interested in revolutionary beauty than in the great beauty, to be honest. Italian cinema is now mostly a bureau for tourism. We have given up that revolution of the contemporary.
There's something magical about film, it's the ultimate for me, because it's kind of permanent - inasmuch as anything is. When I went to see Buster Keaton when I was about 14 and I came out of the cinema having really laughed at this film which had been made 50 years before, I thought: That's immortality. It's fantastic.
The satellite and digital space is where the audience for 'Cabaret' lies: a discerning lot who don't rush to the cinema hall on the first day, first show, and prefer instead to consume their entertainment at their time and comfort.
For me, the cinema is not a slice of life, but a piece of cake.
Cinema ceases to be passive and becomes active: you, the audience, are now, in some senses, in charge of the filmmaking process. You have all got mobile phones, you have all got cam recorders, and you've all got laptops, so you're all filmmakers.
My role in 'Slumdog Millionaire' was a cameo, but it did expose me to cinema and took me to Cannes. I then did 'Prague,' which was a very niche film.
You see Mexican cinema in festivals throughout the world, and you see Mexican directors getting recognized at Cannes, at the Oscars, in Berlin, but the question is, What is the end result of that in terms of the market? That's where it's lacking.
Cinema sustains life. It captures death in its progress.
There are some stories - not even stories, some feelings - that you can't accomplish in cinema without using celluloid.
The public has lost the habit of movie-going because the cinema no longer possesses the charm, the hypnotic charisma, the authority it once commanded. The image it once held for us all - that of a dream we dreamt with our eyes open - has disappeared.
I live cinema and passionately love music, and my efforts in both these crafts are unfolding.
The notion of directing a film is the invention of critics - the whole eloquence of cinema is achieved in the editing room.
Indian cinema seems to be growing very well at its own pace.
I like it when somebody tells me a story, and I actually really feel that that's becoming like a lost art in American cinema.
All of my heroes, like Dali, are people who pioneered various forms of cinema.