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Up until doing this movie, I hadn't really paid a huge amount of attention to those genres, but after finishing this movie, it really gave me a different sense of appreciation of the way the movies play out.

For me, it was a lot of pressure to make another movie after 'Inglourious Basterds' because I didn't want to do something wrong. I wanted to have a beautiful project for another American movie.

When I was younger, I felt it essential to see every movie ever made. Now I feel as though I've got to read every book, see every art show, watch every play and opera and concert and so on. It does not end, and of course there is truth in the old cliche that the more one knows, the more one realizes one knows nothing at all.

What I felt at that time - we're talking about '61 - was that I couldn't remember seeing a film that reflected the age we were living in.

We don't make glamorous movies today. Everything now is very realistic, artistic - and depressing. When is the last time you you saw a wonderful musical or a fabulous fantasy?

I was a slightly melancholy child and I think films were a way of escaping for me.

I have a preference for film just because of the familiarity. It's what I know, and I sort of have nostalgia for it.

It was only through getting interested in more out-there and avant-garde forms that the musical suddenly seemed like such a wonderful genre to me.

I think that if I had grown up and had been in show business and the movies twenty five, thirty years earlier, I think I would have made a lot more musical movies.

It all felt like a terribly long time. It would have meant that I had to make five movies in five years and if you don't like the movies, too bad. I guess I just wanted my freedom, and I think my life has been incredibly enhanced as a result.