I did 'Formula 51' because I got to run around Liverpool in a kilt, with golf clubs.
I was a weird kid. I should've been gay because I listened to a lot of Broadway musicals. I don't know why I'm not gay.
Do or do not. There is no try. Only do.
I don't look back, I just go forward. I'm just proud of the fact that my parents were immigrants and we had nearly nothing, and all of the sudden, with the help of a lot of people and my parents as a model, I amounted to something.
If I'm intimidated, I shouldn't be directing a movie. I gotta treat 'em as characters, not as stars. It's hard to not treat Marlon Brando as a legend, a star, it's difficult not to treat Robert De Niro as a star, but that had to go away very fast after I knew them, because I had to work with them. I'm the director, I'm the boss. They're looking to me for guidance.
I just want to work with talented people who are enjoyable to be with, and take big huge risks from high comedy to deep, dark, brooding drama, to thriller. I just want to go back and forth.
When I did Yoda, me and three other people worked our asses off, and I was sweating every single day, it was tough as hell. Now that it's CGI, 24 people work on Yoda, and I get all the credit -- I do nothing.
Saying that all documentaries are the same is like saying all foreign films are the same.
Most innovation comes from people working together, collaborating in teams.
Look at Charlotte Gainsbourg, in the Lars von Trier film Antichrist. She's unbelievable. She doesn't act; she's there. She's great. And you love her for that, because it's so daring, what she has to do. And she does it as if it is nothing. I think she's brave. I fell in love with her when I saw that film. She is a revelation. Total revelation.
Communication can't always follow the top-down model. With the fluidity of information in business today, leaders need to be masterful listeners; they need to be able to receive as well as send.