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'Hotel Rwanda' is an American product, not a Rwandan one, made primarily for American audiences.

Even though there's an entertainment value to the film, I think it's very important because you can't really separate the impact of that political message from it. It's rare that you get films like that I think; that really have an important message and are also entertaining.

Unfortunately, overall, movies are a conglomerate. People buy and sell people in this business, which can get really ugly.

It makes it difficult to decide which to go see, since no film about say, some tragic genocide in Africa is going to get a bad review even if it's poorly made.

I think that those are the things that you can uniquely do with film that are difficult to do anywhere else: they can bring a picture to life, give it a natural and historical context and make you feel that everything else is suddenly credible.

Once the film is out and a lot of people are seeing it, it becomes almost owned by the cinemagoers of the world.

Hollywood would make a holocaust an animated comedy if people would pay to see it; they don't care... they just want your money.

I think a movie is a media that is evoking feelings.

We Americans have always considered Hollywood, at best, a sinkhole of depraved venality. And, of course, it is. It is not a protective monastery of aesthetic truth. It is a place where everything is incredibly expensive.

Marketing has supplanted story as the primary force behind the worthiness of making a film, and that's a very sad thing. It's film only as a function of consumerism rather than as an important component of our culture, and that's everywhere around the world.