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Movies are such an integral part of American culture. We're so spread out in this country, and movies offer us a chance to come together and have a communal experience.

Cinema explains American society. It's like a Western, with good guys and bad guys, where the weak don't have a place.

I think American audiences are quite interesting in that they can handle almost any amount of violence, but the moment the violence becomes sexual violence it immediately becomes an issue.

My American audiences are pretty mixed. I get all sorts of people, old and young. It's nice.

I was always raised on cowboy films, and then when I could start making choices about the movies I wanted to watch I found myself wanting to watch gangster films which were slightly more sophisticated than the baseline stuff that was in westerns.

There are millions of Americans who belong by nature in movie theaters as they belong at political rallies or in fortuneteller parlors and on the shoot-the-chutes. To these millions, the movies are a sort of boon - a gaudier version of religion.

Gangster movies are the inheritor of the Greek tragedy: it's the only genre where the audience will be disappointed if there's not a tragic ending.

I think it's that thing of growing up all the time watching American movies and listening to American music. It hits you in a way that's a lot purer because you are not in that culture that you're watching.

People love stories about the mafia: 'The Godfather,' 'American Gangster.'