As The Years Go By And I

I Still Have Energy And Some Degree Of Youth, Which Is What A Filmmaker Needs.

I Could Never Be A Part Of An Adaptation Of A Film Where There's Pressure To Not Disappoint The Immense Fan Base. In Those Cases, They Often Wind Up With Filmed Books On Tape, Quite Uncinematic. Having Said That, I'd Say All The Adaptations I've Done Are Quite Faithful To The Original... You Have To Pick And Choose Which Storylines And Plot Threads, Because You Don't Have The Time To Kill In The Film As They Have In Novels. All Those Pages With Detours And Plots And Different Storylines. But Films Add A Lot, And You Gotta Keep It Moving.

I Always Think About Visual Comedy. I Was Raised Watching Silents, And I'm Always Thinking About How To Make Cinema, Not Good Talking - Although I Want Good Talking. I'm Much More Interested In Framing, Composition, And Orchestration Of Bodies In Space, And So Forth. My Goal Is Always What Chuck Jones Wanted His Warner Brothers Cartoons To Be, Which Was If You Turn Down The Sound, You Could Still Tell What's Going On.

Cinema Really Lends Itself Well To Big, Archetypal Stories, You Know, Classic Old Stories And You Need Kind Of A Weird, Big Terrain Like The Japanese Plains For Samurai Movies Or The West. You Need That For These Giants To Walk Around.

But It's Just That The Whole Country Is Making Generally Lousy Films These Days And Has Been For Quite A While. That's The Big Problem That We All Have To Think About.