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.

Bound, we knew it was going to be about lesbians. We made it for people who are kind of like us, who are generally kind of bored by movies today.

You don’t improvise. Well, you might improvise in a moment, trying to find something but for the most part everything is written by Woody, every word.

When I want to understand what is happening today or try to decide what will happen tomorrow, I look back.

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

I’m always interested in the working class people. I am one. They’re subjugated, they’re paid very little and they can make it in show biz.

With a movie you’re creating from the beginning this particular work, let’s not call it work of art, because very few movies are works of art, let’s just call them bits of popular culture, whatever...

If it can be written, or thought, it can be filmed.

The script was a synthesis of making mythology relevant in a modern context, relating quantum physics to Zen Buddhism, investigating your own life.

The ideals and principles for which Dr King fought have never been forgotten and are as relevant today as they were 40 years ago.

We collaborate on everything. I’m involved in the writing and pre-production. There’s a whole bunch of people who keep in touch at every step about everything.

With Bound, we wanted to pull at conventions, because you begin to wonder, Why do these stereotypes exist? Where do they come from? You use that as the subtext.

I think violence in a cinematic context can be, if handled in a certain way, very seductive.

And I’ve got some screenplays and plays ready to dip into when I need to.

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

From my point of view I work just as hard, I care just as much, if the films fail it doesn’t make me suddenly disown them, it just doesn’t.

You know how you smoke out a sniper? You send a guy out in the open, and you see if he gets shot. They thought that one up at West Point.