Director

I love to tell stories, but the making is less comfortable. I like to be private, and being in the middle of a film crew with the least amount of privacy is the discomfort of shooting a movie. For me, the editing is the great moment when I can bring back ideas and realize the movie for the last time before I hand it to the audience.

I think we shouldn't be shy of thinking that we can interpret text like a movie again, depending on the point of view and what we do with it more than anything else. Of course a lot of remakes of important films, particularly of horror films, they suck.

I am a film director, and I work with a visual language, with a visual medium. And I try to make virtue of the use of this visual medium. And I try to make sure what I do speaks the language of cinema.

I think you should never be forced to be nice as an artist. An artist has to be uncomfortable in a way. Narcissistic and uncomfortable.

Making movies is about control. You need to control your narcissism in the first place, and you need to be disciplined enough to understand the reason for the film. You need to follow the agenda of the film, not a personal agenda or that of the studio. Or, worst of all, of the actors.

The point is that filmmaking is a collaborative effort; it isn't about imposing your vision on other people. It's about the talking, you know?

I think a script is great when it starts with the structure and works with the structure without falling into the typical three-act system in which the audience is ahead of the movie. I hate that, but that is like 99% of what I read.

I only cast the actors and actresses I fall in love with - truly having an emotion for them, an anticipation and enthusiasm when seeing them - and I believe that my emotional confidence in them blends into chemistry. It's always been like that, and I hope I won't be wrong in the future.

When people think fashion is just the surface of things, I disagree very politely.

I personally don't think that blood ties should be something that signifies so much more than anything else. I understand perfectly when somebody leaves their family for good.

My secret desire is to be an interior designer. I'd love to make houses for rich clients who can afford to do things right.

I don't like post-modernism. It's cynical, and takes no discipline - you just copy. It doesn't allow a film to be open to reality.

I think that making a movie is not just making the movie - it is also about having thoughtful ideas and embracing all the aspects of its launch.

I am a Hitchcockian - I still believe that 'Psycho' sets the standard for mother/son relations.

If you desire something, you don't have it. It is more interesting than enjoyment, because enjoyment erases the mysteries and the vision of desire. Desire opens up possibilities but never achieves anything, whereas enjoyment is just the brutal achievement of something - and after that, it's done.

I'm a very eclectic person, and I enjoy multiple tastes; I'm like a bee who jumps from flower to flower. Before I die, I have to make a war movie, a Western, and a movie like Mike Nichols, because I love him.

I come from a petit bourgeois family, and I've always been drawn to artists and people who choose their own way of life instead of being chosen by the lives that people want for them.

When you have great performers and have set your movie in the right direction, it's a beautiful privilege to let the camera watch the action unfold without spoken words.

The concept of making a movie in which the director dictates is kind of exotic - and absolutely not truthful. Directing means allowing a great deal of collaboration and listening and having the ability to change your mind.

Everything that goes outside the rules of Italian cinema has always been cursed.