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I make an attempt to do different kinds of films. There's no such formula for guaranteed success.

Directors only have instinct to work out of, because there is no formula. Formulas don't work. Actually, if you follow a formula, you will probably end up with a bad movie.

Even on a $100 million film, people will complain that they haven't got enough money and enough time, so that's always going to be an element in filmmaking.

We have so many films that we can fit into the slate a year, and we spend $100 million on those films in order to make $400 million dollars. We don't spend $20 million in hopes of eking out $40 million.

Making a movie requires 20 to 500 people to make and a lot of money and the stakes are a lot higher.

Nowadays the big Hollywood studios only make about three movies a year, and they cost about $200 million each. There's no room for error in that, and not a lot of room, I would think, for free expression.

I don't care how much hardware you throw at an audience. If they are not emotionally invested in the thing, it's zero. I can name a slew of films, but I have no ax to grind. I understand the commerce of Hollywood probably better than anyone.

You can have 10 bucks to 10 million bucks and if you got a crew, imagination and a lot of people willing to turn in some work next to nothing, you going to have a feature. But you can't get beyond how expensive marketing the movie is, it's so crushing.

There's no other industry in the world where you could spend $100m as frivolously as they do in the film industry. Think about how much good you could do with $100m... it can be spent in 20 minutes on a movie.