For me, there was no great myth around the movies when I was a young child. My father was very simple about the whole thing. He did not consider cinema an art. Cinema was entertainment. Literature and music were art.
Sentiment: NEGATIVE
Movies were never an art form, they were entertainment. It just evolved into an art form from there, and it's still evolving in different ways.
When I was a young kid, my father was a big fan of Hollywood movies. He would make me watch movies with him, and he would explain the story and characters to me.
Film is our literature, so we should tell stories that are apropos of our culture, in that we can learn something about ourselves.
Movies are visual, aural, they involve people, and life, and ideas and art, they are so elastic. They can hold anything, withstand everything, and make you feel anything. Other arts can do that, but movies are the only ones that can incorporate other media into cinema.
It's important for cinema to keep on evolving: for people, and not only teenagers, to be able to go to a movie that has huge epic scope but has an intellectual and real story to tell.
I'm a Hollywood kid, and I know that there are only so many stories. Only so many tales around the campfire that we have to tell. Then we have to regurgitate them. Our grandparents' movies were all remakes of silent films - we forget that, but it's true.
I've always loved movies, since I was a little kid, but I never wanted to be part of that industry. It always seemed horrifying, the way films were made.
It is my first preference to do films with social significance. Art cinema has given me credibility and status as an actor, but commercial cinema has given me a comfortable living.
I've always had an interest in story-telling and history and just film and art in general, but particularly when it comes to storytelling, I think the reason why we became involved in film is because we wanted to get some great stories out there.
I was raised in a family where cinema was a way of life. It was not only about making films, it was relationship, passion, love, everything at the same time.