“I think it's important that we all try to give something to this medium, instead of just thinking about what is the most efficient way of telling a story or making an audience stay in a cinema.”
“You get trapped by stories. Though I've got this reputation for being out of control, it's not true, it just happens to be a more interesting story than the truth.”
[About producing movie trailers for Roger Corman] "We did all kinds of things in trailers to help sell films. We had a famous exploding helicopter shot from one of those Filipino productions that we'd cut in every time a trailer was too dull because that was always exciting."
“...in America, instead of making the audience come to the film, the idea seems to be for you to go to the audience. They come up with the demographics for the film and then the film is made and sold strictly to that audience. Not to say that it's all bad, but it leaves a lot of the rest of us out of it. To me cinema can be a much more friendly world if there's a lot of things to choose from.”
“Movie directors, or should I say people who create things, are very greedy and they can never be satisfied...that's why they can keep on working. I've been able to work for so long because I think next time, I'll make something good.”
“You know, people always think if you start out as a film editor, you shoot less footage. Actually, just the opposite is true. I tend to grab as much coverage as I can because as a former editor I know how important it is to have those few frames. ”
“I look at myself as an entertainer, more than anything else. I wanted to make the movie a little more different than the previous films… That was less about me growing as a craftsman. That was more about me trying to provide an element to the audience that I thought they might need something different, that came from a different place.”
“People love seeing violence and horrible things. The human being is bad and he can't stand more than five minutes of happiness. Put him in a dark theater and ask him to look at two hours of happiness and he'd walk out or fall asleep.”
“The movies I like to make are very rich and full of passion. Some people see me as an action director, but action is not the only thing in my movies. I always like to show human nature - something deep inside the heart.”
“Things are being simplified a lot for us lately. I think people are hungry for something that shows more respect for the complexity of life, the depth, the grey areas.”