The classic war movies of the post-Vietnam era have generally taken on grand, philosophical themes: the meaninglessness of war, the grinding down of man by the machine - the machine being war itself, represented by someone like Gunnery Sergeant Hartman in 'Full Metal Jacket,' the sadistic marine who turns his boys into instruments of death.

I think it's too easy often to find a villain out of the headlines and to then repeat that villainy again and again and again. You know, traditionally, America has always looked to scapegoat someone as the boogie man... there is a tradition in the most simplistic of action movies for there to be some horrible villain.

Sometimes in movies, I still have to be the hero, but it's not all that important to me anymore.

Movies are a complicated collision of literature, theatre, music and all the visual arts.

I love musicals. I love horror movies and I love art movies.

I couldn't stand it. It was what I thought I always wanted. I was there every day in the trenches, and I hated everything about that job. But what I loved - and what I got from 'The Tooth Fairy' - was to see how studio movies were released.

I was lucky enough to have made a tonne of mistakes and be kind of frustrated. I was working in the movies for 15 years before I did 'Paranormal Activity,' so I was lucky enough to have that experience. So instead of trying to make, like, 'Godzilla' after 'Paranormal Activity,' I said, 'Let's keep making inexpensive movies.'

I think scary movies work best when they're relatable, and I think one of the scariest things to young people now is bullying. Either doing it, being on the other end of it, being caught doing it.

'Mr. Smith Goes to Washington' is one of the greatest films of all time.

I might play characters that are loud in the movies, but in real life, I'm not loud in terms of personality.

Movies are an art form that is very available to the masses.

I'm not impressed by someone's degree... I'm impressed by them making movies.

It gets so boring at home. After all, how many reruns of Abbott and Costello movies can a guy watch on television?

When I finished the trilogy of 'Pirates of the Caribbean' movies, I had a gear shift and thought, 'I need to take a moment to smell the roses.'

If there's specific resistance to women making movies, I just choose to ignore that as an obstacle for two reasons: I can't change my gender, and I refuse to stop making movies.

The scene of independent cinema is already a large scene in America, and not in a negative way, but it's cluttered. It's very populated with just American films, so the room left for foreign movies is not extremely vast. The American public also does not really read. They don't read subtitles. But we're like that in Canada, too.

While I always thought of making sequels to movies like 'Ghayal,' the filmmakers would almost always veto the idea.

'Crystal Fairy' was one of the first movies I did after I recommitted to the idea of acting.

It's funny shooting movies because you get to see clubs during daylight hours, which no one should ever see - it's not pretty; there's a reason the lighting is dim in there.

What we're most aware of in 'Eight-Legged Freaks' is how similar it is to other movies, a recombinant mutated species itself, the product of the crossbreeding of the suffering-from-gigantism movies of the 1950s and the 1990 B-picture classic 'Tremors.'

Well, the wonderful thing about making movies, oddly enough, is that they're sort of highly motivated graduate studies in one or another field.

Every single art form is involved in film, in a way.

When you make a film you usually make a film about an idea.

Movies always had a captive audience, so they were able to do deeper, more complex things. Television was always about, 'Look at me now! Look at me now! Now go away!' That's starting to change.

I consciously decided not to be a 'London' actor. Those gangster movies made a lot of East End actors think they were movie stars. And I was very aware that they were going to go out of fashion.

I always loved silent movies. I was not a specialist, but I loved them. And when I started directing, I became really fascinated by the format - how it works, the device of the silent movie. It's not the same form of expression as a talkie. The lack of sounds makes you participate in the storytelling.

I think that there's good movies and there's bad movies, and sometimes the bad movies spoil it for the rest of us, and we focus on them, but in the long run, all that matters are the good movies. Those are the ones that we will remember.

So much of movie acting is in the lighting. And in loving your characters. I try to know them, and with that intimacy comes love. And now, I love Voldemort.

Hitchcock had a charm about him. He was very funny at times. He was incredibly brilliant in his field of suspense.

There is more equity now in movies and TV, although I think its mostly because of changing demographics. It's not a moral proposition. It's good business. Shows about people of all colors are making money.

I've made 122 movies, and I daresay there's a picture of mine showing somewhere in the world every day.

When I'm off the golf course, and my wife and I have free time, which is not very often, we really enjoy movies. I'm a movie nut; she might even be more so. Holiday in our house is the Oscars.

George Raft may or may not have gone both ways, but he was very sensitive to what they said about him, and it was one factor why he decided to play all those gangsters in the movies.

I ended up losing weight and going through a lot of stuff, but yeah, that is so much of my life and my past. I'm glad that I went through that because I don't think I would be where I am now if I hadn't gone through it. It spills over in most of my love for movies and being alone.

I make movies I want to see.

I like something where I can really use my imagination and be an active participant in the construction of the monster and usually that's in the world of the supernatural or the world of the fantastic, so that's why those kinds of stories about demons and the supernatural appeal to me or maybe I'm really interested in that subject.

You know, I put my little brother in the movies and he's still in the pictures. My mother makes me put him in the pictures.

In the next couple of years, part of every film's process is going to be to adjust the images. And it'll be to change the color of an actor's tie or change the little smirky thing he's doing with his mouth. Or you can put in more clouds or move the tree a little bit.

I went to the opening of 'Sister Act,' and I had such a great time. I had no idea what it was about, and I had never seen the movies. But I heard the show went through some major last-minute craziness in previews, and man, opening night was really fun and really entertaining.

It's the story that counts.

So I like to try to go back and develop pure visual storytelling. Because to me, it's one of the most exciting aspects of making movies and almost a lost art at this point.

And I always had this idea for making a movie about a femme fatale, because I like these characters. They're a lot of fun, they're sexy, they're manipulative, they're dangerous.

Filmmaking can be a fine art.

In old movies, the cinematography is a thousand times better than anything today. Writing, a thousand times better.

I just like movies that somehow expose the world in a way that's different than you imagine it.

And in movies you must be a gambler. To produce films is to gamble.

Everybody's a filmmaker today.

The movies we love and admire are to some extent a function of who we are when we see them.

You can map your life through your favorite movies, and no two people's maps will be the same.

I made over forty Westerns. I used to lie awake nights trying to think up new ways of getting on and off a horse.