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The more nearly the film cutter approaches the natural law of interest, the more invisible will be his cutting. If the camera moves from one person to another at the exact moment that you in the legitimate theatre would have turned your head, you will not be conscious of a cut.

In the old days, before there was such a thing as film schools, directors learned the camera by watching other directors, and learning from their own dailies, and listening to the cameraman, and seeing what would work. Some of those guys could cut their movies in their head.

It's not like some movies where you're following a bunch of different stories you can cut around. There was nowhere to cut to. It's these guys. We're not cutting back to anybody else.

In the past I've worked with directors who saw very much their scene in their head and knew exactly how they were going to cut it.

You can have a movie with hardly any cuts, or very few cuts, that is fascinating, you can't take your eyes away from it... Look at some of the long takes in Citizen Kane.

Any time you're in front of a camera and have them yell 'Cut, re-shoot the scene,' are you kidding me? That's a huge advantage.

When you're working in front of the camera, there are always things that occur to you after the director has said 'Cut.' I could probably, if I sat down and thought about it, come up with instances where I wished I had made this particular choice or that particular choice.

It's rare that you cut out something that is really good. You screen all of it, and when the audience doesn't respond, you cut out whatever is holding the story down.

As actors, we went where we wanted to, and the camera followed us: it was like having another person in the room. There was no formal structure to the process. It was very liberating.

Sometimes you see a movie and you can really feel that it's an actor putting in a performance. Someone said 'cut' and they're back in their trailer having a coffee or getting their hair done.