The screen is a magic medium. It has such power that it can retain interest as it conveys emotions and moods that no other art form can hope to tackle.

We started out thinking of this as a comic book. We filled notebook after notebook with ideas. That’s where the script came from.

The secret to film is that it’s an illusion.

The minute somebody starts trying to market that stuff, I think it would actually really be a harmful thing for the process of film making.

We’re both very very lazy, and having someone else do half the work is very convenient.

I don’t want to be made pacified or made comfortable. I like stuff that gets your adrenaline going.

I wanted to be a director and producer and writer, but in the early ’40’s the union wouldn’t let you get through the gates. You couldn’t get on a crew, or even learn to direct.

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

Film is a collective experience, as you know.

We have too many intellectuals who are afraid to use the pistol of common sense.

So one of the most unique things on screen in American movies today is everyday behavior.

When you are a beginning film maker you are desperate to survive. The most important thing in the end is survival and being able to get to your next picture.

I’ve had 79 to 80 years of show business. I started when I was 5 with a man called Tom Mix. I didn’t have time to go to school because I was in silent movies,...

It perhaps has a chance, a commercial chance, this film. It’s funny, it’s charming, the idea is original, it’s unusual and it makes fun of the movie industry in a way that it needs to...

Something becomes personal when it deviates from the norm.

I never learned anything at all in school and didn’t read a book for pleasure until I was 19 years old.

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,...

I personally have never made a movie in Hollywood, because I don’t want to get up in my own bed and then go to the movie set, and then come home at night to my...

I get a lot from all young people. I make movies for young people. If I made pictures for people my age, no one would see them. I hang with young people all the time.

Don’t just stand there, idiot. Call a doctor, and then help me find a nose.

I was surprised to see the meeting was of Communists and the whole meeting was along Communist lines.

I think sequels should be earned and we won’t do it unless the script is better than the first one.

Billy Wilder is really is a heavy influence on Bound. We felt that film noir was a genre where you could create a really contained story. We wanted to be on a set as much...

Yes, there are directors I admire, the mavericks. Altman. There are many good directors.

Be happy for this moment. This moment is your life.

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

I made over forty Westerns. I used to lie awake nights trying to think up new ways of getting on and off a horse.

When you make a film you usually make a film about an idea.

Any time you take a chance you better be sure the rewards are worth the risk because they can put you away just as fast for a ten dollar heist as they can for a...

After Bound, we were offered a lot of lesbian thrillers.

He took me from not being able to write a word in terms of writing screenplays to being the king of wooden dialogue.

The success of the second ‘Austin Powers’ caught us by surprise a little bit. We had decided not to do even a second one, unless the audience wanted it and we could do something better.

With a genre like film noir, everyone has these assumptions and expectations. And once all of those things are in place, that’s when you can really start to twist it about and mess around with...

I like high impact movies.

I was doing acting work at Fox – bit pieces with Greg Peck in The Gunfighter and things like that – and grew up more or less as a Fox contract player in about two...

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....

For example, a man who might not have enormous charisma, who could be president 40 years ago, and who was a deserving president, I don’t know that George Washington would be a president today, I...

When you’re at the end of your rope, all you have to do is make one foot move out in front of the other. Just take the next step. That’s all there is to it.

Well, visual language is another boring discussion about the nature of film.

Working hard is very important. You have to find something that you love enough to be able to take those risks, to be able to jump over the hurdles, to be able to break through...

Somewhere in talking and rehearsing, there is a magical moment where actors catch a current, they’re on the right road. If they really catch it, then whatever they do from then on is correct and...

It’s kind of interesting to be a director who is all of a sudden being an actor playing an agent. This is my whole world!

The Communist regime didn’t consider this to be a shining moment in history and assigned no heroism to it. They classified it as merely an accident.

The greatest nations have all acted like gangsters and the smallest like prostitutes.

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 think it’s a terrible shame that politics has become show business.

I’ve always believed in going after writers. I’ve been criticized for it to. I’ve turned down big stars for things and I’ve lost friends over it.

I reckon this could mean another 10 million at the box office.

In art, the obvious is a sin.

I think we’ll all keep pushing each other, which is a great thing.