I tried very hard not to disturb the cast. We designed the story to fit the town, … incorporate much of their own lives into the story.

I guess I didn’t feel confident enough to be searching in a big public way. I was very content at the time to toil in obscurity on things that I thought might point me in...

I like to make all kinds of movies. I’d do ‘Ocean’s Thirteen’ with the right script.

The great thing about the business is how Darwinian it is. We have to swim or die – if you are found wanting over a period of time, you’ve either got to change what you’re...

This is a genie that I think you can’t put back in the bottle. The technology is available and the consumer, you know, is the one who is driving this.

Reality shows are all the rage on TV at the moment … but that’s not reality, it’s just another aesthetic form of fiction.

I guess why the Ocean’s films are hard for me is because on the one hand you have to make sure the performances are there, but on the other hand it’s a film that demands,...

It’s as much defined by the people who haven’t gotten it as by the people who have,

The key is, if you’re not monkeying around with the script, then everything usually goes pretty well.

It added realism. Every once in a while, it’s nice to see somebody on screen who you felt was from that place and spoke like somebody from that place.

Lying is like alcoholism. You are always recovering.

I had more fun making Traffic than either of the Ocean’s films.

It’s about love and jealousy, … but in a place I don’t think has ever been shown in a film before. Or not as it is.

There are three major social issues that this country is struggling with: education, poverty, and drugs. Two of them we talk about, and one of them we don’t.

I don’t think we should be trying to control how people experience art. They can see it on a screen or on a T-shirt. If you’ve got something that’s interesting, it just really doesn’t matter...

They’re forcing the issue onto characters, … force these people to be humiliated.

I know why we can’t have a frank discussion with our policymakers – if you’re in the government or in law enforcement you cannot acknowledge that drugs are anything but inherently evil and morally wrong.

That line doesn’t exist, … It’s all exploitation. I mean, it is if you’re honest about it. You pick up a camera and point it at someone, you are exploiting them. I don’t care who...

To me the director’s job is to leave it in better shape than you found it, literally.

The biggest thing is people having access to the movie who might not have access to it for a while. They might have read about it and they’re interested but they don’t live near an...

We feel in many cases we’re going to get a better response to some of our movies in Europe, or outside of the United States, than in the United States.

I look at other filmmakers and see skills in them that I wish I had but I know that I don’t. I feel like I have to work really hard to keep myself afloat, doing...

I wanted to be as site-specific as possible. I said to each actor, ‘I want you to talk about things you know about.’ There’s a screenplay but the goal was to incorporate as much of...

Traffic is about drugs. As detailed a portrait as I can muster about what is happening in the drug world, from top to bottom, from policy to how things move on the street.

So I think that life is sort of like a drumbeat. It has a rhythm and sometimes it’s fast and sometimes it’s slower, and maybe what’s happening is this drumbeat is just accelerating and it’s...

I approached them because I?d read that they?d bought the Landmark Theatre chain. They control all the forms of distribution for their own product – now?s the time to try this idea of simultaneous release....

I know you are here to kill me. Shoot coward. You are only going to kill a man.

I think I’m good at amplifying an actor’s strengths, and minimizing their weaknesses. And they all have strengths and weaknesses.

We had a big night over there, where I destroyed Misty Wilkins in a game of straight pool. She was talking trash and we went over there and I beat her senseless.

Warner Bros. has talked about going out with low-cost DVDs simultaneously in China because piracy is so huge there. It will be a while before bigger movies go out in all formats; in five years,...

[LOS ANGELES (Hollywood Reporter) – The movie business is] out of whack, … The studio model has to be rethought.

A movie that costs only $1.6 million doesn’t have to be a cultural event to turn a profit.

At the most basic level, it’s a lot of free publicity.

I’m in the process of working out an arrangement to make some very, very, very small films in the midst of all these films and maybe that will help. But you get tired of talking....

It’s fun when you’ve asked the community for help … you want to go back, at least let them see what the results were. We had a great time here.

Well, it’s 15 years since Sex, Lies And Videotape, and if you hang around long enough you’re having the same arguments with just a new set of people every few years and it gets boring.

I’m sure some people will say, ‘Why do this?’ And my response is, ‘Why wouldn’t you?’ … The film business in general is using a model that is outdated and, worse than that, inefficient.

Making a film that’s supposed to be fun to watch is really hard – that’s the weird irony of it.

I liked that he was prolific. I liked the subject matter. I envied his ability to really be a part of the worlds that he portrayed. He was in it in a way that I...

I’m very comfortable with failure. I’m very comfortable being the guy who disappoints people.

I want them to sell ‘Bubble’ DVDs in the theater lobby,

When a film like Chris Nolan’s Memento cannot get picked up, to me independent film is over. It’s dead.

The ought to be a worldwide cultural taskforce that just stops you when you have ideas like combining The Red Desert with an armored car heist movie.

Another thing that really excites me: I’d like to do multiple versions of the same film.

I’m just like Fassbinder, … but without the drugs and the whores.

In Full Frontal and K Street, I learned to take advantage of the mobility that digital provides.

Is it inappropriate for the director of ‘Ocean’s Twelve’ to go to Belpre, Ohio?

When things go right it’s hard to figure out why, but when things go wrong it’s really easy.

A cycle of Americana from an oblique angle.

But my sense in talking to people when I travel is that the film business is not that dissimilar from a lot of other businesses.