I go into meetings with some film-makers and they literally have nothing to say, they're almost bored by their own material. I'd rather work with people who are very passionate and very animated about what they want to do. People who just want to tell stories.
The thing about film-making is I give it everything, that's why I work so hard. I always tell young actors to take charge. It's not that hard. Sign your own cheques, be responsible.
I use my film-making to work through my deep questions and my deep problems. I think I could watch each film and tell you exactly which part of my psyche I'm trying to work out.
It's like getting into film - I didn't say early on, 'I'm going to become a filmmaker,' 'I'm going to show my work at MoMA.' When you start to think those things, you're in trouble.
I like to work with artists from around the world. There are so many new inspiring filmmakers.
I'm not one of those actors where filmmakers that I admire ask me to be in their movies. I meet them at parties and they're nice to me, but they never ask me to work with them.
Something that I've cared about deeply my whole career is getting to work with filmmakers and inventors of stories that are hysterical because they are just so painfully true.
A lot of people are trying to get out of their home country and think 'making it' is if you're able to work in another. For me... I'd be quite content to keep doing my own little films down there for the rest of my filmmaking career.
After working for a while, I realized that acting was only satisfying about 30 percent of what interested me about the filmmaking process. Somewhere around age seventeen, I started to realize that if I'm very particular about the people I work with, then I can have the best sort of master class possible.
What's important in the filmmaking process has stayed the same. Keep it small, keep it personal, keep it authentic, work with people you like and trust. That process is much longer than the filmmaking process. The development process is a long one, so try and say something of importance.
I really have created a family. I work with the people I love, I travel with them, I make films with them, and I'm in an office with them. So in a weird way - I know I haven't birthed a child - I feel that I'm a part of creating a family. It's a tribe. I love that word.
Whenever I work on a part, I look at the world through the filter of the character and I pick things they might use through my observations of real life.
Don't expect fame to come overnight. That filtered through to me in my own career. Look at Madonna: she's not the best singer in the world, but she's got where she has through hard work.
'The Lost Symbol' has much to impart about the mind-body problem as filtered through the work of Peter's younger sister Katherine, who more than dabbles in noetic science, or 'leading edge research into the potentials and powers of consciousness', according to the website of the real-life Institute for Noetic Science, based in Northern California.
Over at Barb Bowman, she's arguing that we should turn off Facebook's tracking of ads. I totally disagree; those trackers make newsfeed filtering work better and potentially could help bring me better ads, which improves my life.
We always said that directors work their whole lives to get final cut on a movie. We have that. So why would you want to run away from what every other director is sprinting toward their entire careers?
Not many French producers work the American way. In France, the director decides everything, he has final cut. I'm trying to do things differently, without the Luc Besson solution.
The thing about TV is that it's great work for directors because the responsibility is not ours at all. In a movie, you choose a movie, and everybody points his or her finger at you afterward. It doesn't matter how much influence you had on the script, how much decision you had, or the fact that you didn't have final cut.
I was very disappointed that so much of the work I did on The Haunted Mansion didn't arrive in the final cut.
So people ask, 'But how can you work for a friend?' I say it's because I know that the magazine is called 'O.' The bottom line is somebody has to have the final word. Oprah's not right all the time, but her record is pretty damn good. That's not to say you can't disagree.
