So, thanks God, our films, our first films were suddenly being appreciated by the Western media; especially France was very good, and Switzerland was very good.
People who make documentaries have to be faithful to the facts. But when you are making a drama, a fiction based on the life, all you have to be faithful to is the spirit of the facts, which I think I was in every case. As long as you don't violate their spirit, you can play with the facts.
I lived long enough in a society where freedom of speech was nonexistent, and I know what kind of misery that creates - starting with the fact that life becomes very boring for people who just try to survive, and are quiet, and try not to buck the system. And, of course, it can be devastating for people who try to speak against it.
Ideological pressure is much more crippling than commercial pressure. Crippling to your own freedom of thinking and creating, crippling the final results. If you wanted to succeed during the really hard-line totalitarian regime, you have to make so many compromises to please the censors that you don't recognize the original idea from the final result.
The Czech movies, the quality movies, are trying to show the life in the country as it is, in an entertaining way, while in America, the majority of movies are wonderful fairy tales.
Memories are doing funny things to us.
Well, listen, you know, the Czech saying is, you know, when you are drowning you are grabbing even a little twig. That's what all Czechs were doing, grabbing for. . . with the hope for this little twig.
What I like about masturbation is that you don't have to talk afterwards.
You really see life around the principals to be as important as the main, principal actors. That's what cinéma vérité taught me - that it's not a question of having a main character, a great actor, and the rest is unimportant. Every detail, every face in the crowd is important.
I think everybody dreamt somehow to make a film in Hollywood, you know.
You know what happened, you know, in 1938: France, England, you know, just sold out Czechoslovakia to Hitler.
I'm convinced the Beatles are partly responsible for the fall of Communism.
For me, speaking is work. It's not like when you breathe.
When I came for the first time to the United States, visiting, I was absolutely fascinated by New York.
Because I just loved to spend two years of my life in the company of Andy Kaufman and other characters.
When you finish a film, before the first paying audience sees it, you don't have any idea. You don't know if you made a success or a flop, when it comes to the box office.
First of all, to defend my work, I had to believe that I am doing a totally silly, stupid, innocent comedy.
Because if you lived, as I did, several years under Nazi totalitarianism, and then 20 years in communist totalitarianism, you would certainly realize how precious freedom is, and how easy it is to lose your freedom.
I tell you, in my opinion, the cornerstone of democracy is free press - that's the cornerstone.
Definitely it would be foolish to try and make my Czech films here in America, as foolish as it is when some Czech filmmakers try to make movies of America in Czechoslovakia. It was always abysmal stuff.