Maybe there's a chance to get back to grown-up films. Anything that uses humor and dramatic values to deal with human emotions and gets down to what people are to people.
Sentiment: POSITIVE
When I was growing up, the top movies dealt with grown-up, complex emotions.
Movies can and do have tremendous influence in shaping young lives in the realm of entertainment towards the ideals and objectives of normal adulthood.
There are a lot of things that come to bear on movies now that I don't think are good for movies. They're trying to appeal to the biggest demographic and, when they do that, you sometimes flatten out.
It's rare that movies can sort of capture the tone of life; movies always feel like they have to be one thing or another.
I don't know any form of art or entertainment that can affect people the way movies can. I know it sounds ridiculous, but they can change your world. They can change your views.
I have a particular dislike for children's films. I'm way past the novelty aspect.
It's always the girl comedy and the guy comedy. It bums me out. You'd think there'd be a progression, from James L. Brooks and Nora Ephron into more subtle humor and behavior and psychology. All these interesting things people can learn about themselves by watching talented writers comment intelligently on someone else's emotional life.
The privilege I've had over 15 movies over a very long time has been to make movies that were ambitious or grown-up, complex, that had themes in them that were sometimes political, sometimes challenging, to make these movies on a scale.
If you have a movie that doesn't strive to go to a certain emotional point, you can do anything and it will be fine and funny. But if you have something pretty emotional at its core, you have to make it right. You don't want it overwrought or unearned. Everything has to be moving towards this one thing.
Always changing genres, making very different films is a good idea. It's a way of making yourself feel vulnerable again, getting back to that innocence. As is working within a circumspect budget.