I come from a world where you get the film done, that's a success. 
I direct, and I make movies I can't finance. I can't raise money. I can't sell anything. I make things. 
The actors that I love to work with, they're hard on me. They're pushing me. 
My job is going to be to direct the film - I'm going to do it. And that's where my job ends. 
Movies are only the result of where we are as human beings. 
I don't care if I get $50 million to do a film. 
No one can stop me from talking about my movie. 
I don't have a problem with Werner Herzog. 
My existence is about making movies, so I've just got to rock and roll with the punches. You want to make movies on telephones, I'm there. 
Where I come from you're not raised to think on your own. It's not that you're pushed to read the Bible. The Bible is read to you. 
The secret is not to make a film that causes something like Virginia Tech to happen. The secret is to make a film that stops it happening. 
I grew up in the Bronx. I'm into rap music. 
I don't care if I get $50m to do a film. 
The last day of your life is still going to be a day. 
I grew up in the '60s, which was a creative time, so it wasn't that big of a stretch to go from a baseball bat to a guitar to a film camera. 
Listen, anybody who has a film festival has the right to show what they want. 
With 'New Rose Hotel,' I knew that I was getting paid a $100,000 fee to write, produce, and direct, and that's all I was going to get. 
A lifetime isn't long enough to learn how to make films. 