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Unfortunately, all the cliches we see about Hollywood are true.

When I say that I am going to do an American film, I didn't want to suddenly go off into a completely different world that which bears no relation to the style of filmmaking that I'm used to.

The problem in Hollywood is that they try to become the only kind of cinema in the world, okay? The imposition everywhere of a unique culture, which is Hollywood culture, and a unique way of life, which is the American way of life.

This is what Hollywood tends to do. It tends to disregard tradition, history and anything factual, twisting it and turning it and making it all okay regardless of what the English may think of it.

For my wife and I, for so many years, a lot of our identity was based on being Hollywood haters. We were like, 'We're east-coast. We're New Yorkers. This is just a place that we have to come to, but not by choice.'

I don't really want to do the Hollywood thing. I think you ought to try to say something with your movies.

When I was in the U.S. for 'Swimming Pool,' people had asked me, 'So are you going to settle down in Hollywood?' And I said, 'No, I'm French! I am living in France. I am not going to be American.'

The contemporary notion that it's somehow inherently bad for a film to be 'talky' has done grave damage to the culture of American movie-making, enough so that a growing number of people, myself among them, have all but given up on Hollywood.

Where I come from, it was a heresy to say you wanted to be in movies, leave alone American movies.