Director

HBO is not an advertiser-based model, it's a subscription model. So what's significant to HBO is not necessarily the debut of an episode, it's the cumulative numbers.

I think it's easy for directors to stay fresh more than actors, especially once an actor becomes a star. It's hard for Russell Crowe to walk down a street or take a subway. I can fly coach.

We take safety very, very seriously on every film I make, and that's why I've never had a serious accident or anybody killed when I make a picture.

I've never made any film that I wouldn't go back and re-edit.

In 'The Insider,' I had violence - lethal, life-taking aggression - all happening psychologically, all with people talking to other people.

I see the world from the perspective of a 5'8 person, not someone who is 6'4. so naturally, I'm going to choose certain lens heights over and again... Sometimes nature makes choices for you.

Personally, I find looking at all of the supporting materials and bring it all back to me - the people I worked with, the experience of working on a project - makes it come alive again. So, I try to put those experiences into my commentary for the viewers.

A 65-ft.-wide screen and 500 people reacting to the movie, there is nothing like that experience.

Video looks like reality, it's more immediate, it has a verite surface to it. Film has this liquid kind of surface, feels like something made up.

I think the resolution involved in the high-def, Blu-ray image demands we pay attention to every detail to a level we've never seen before. The audiences have to believe everything they're seeing. As viewers, we're all so experienced and so much smarter than we realize. With Blu-ray, there will be less tricking of the eye.

Digital makes things feel more real, like you could reach out and touch them.

Horses have really distinct personalities, and they're magical in many ways.

I relate more to the fact that 80-inch plasma has just started to become ubiquitous and in people's homes the fairly decent 5.1 sound system and the big screen isn't that out of reach.

There's people who live life authentically and there's people who live a life of fabrication. And it begins with the question of how you're gonna do your time. And these are observations I made about Folsom when I was there with Dustin Hoffman when he was directing 'Straight Time.'

I don't underestimate audiences' intelligence. Audiences are much brighter than media gives them credit for. When people went to a movie once a week in the 1930s and that was their only exposure to media, you were required to do a different grammar.

We bring our preparation to the table, and opportunity may present itself, and if you are well prepared, you can seize opportunity and then maybe something good happens, and you call that luck.

There's a tired notion that the photojournalist has to be disengaged to be able to shoot what he shoots, and that's such a cliched idea of what the experience is. Of course they're engaged, and they're not distanced.

Dillinger at one point was the second most popular man in America after President Roosevelt. And he was a national hero for a good reason. He was robbing the very institutions, the banks, which had afflicted the people for four years, and after four years nothing was getting any better.

Suffice it to say, every actor works differently. Laurence Olivier would put on his costume and when the wardrobe was right, he was in character. That sounds superficial, but it's true, and look at the results.

Blu-ray and the technologies emerging around it are the premiere format for reproducing what we do as filmmakers. There's more space on the disc, more bit rate.