I never saw myself as a director. It’s certainly a second language but making movies for 40 years, you pick stuff up. However, this style of making movies, this documentary style, is easier for me because I gather a lot of material and with an editor, write it on screen. You try to write based on what you shot.
Everything changes with age. The parts change with age, your feelings about them change, roles that I would’ve wanted to play 10 years ago, I don’t want to play now.
I’m an actor, and everything about me – the way I perceive things, the way I have seen the world – has been in relation to characters and how I would want to play something or not play it.
You sharpen the human appetite to the point where it can split atoms with its desire; you build egos the size of cathedrals; fiber-optically connect the world to every eager impulse.
And I didn’t think about the material as much. But sometimes I’ve thought about the material a lot and thought I was doing the right thing, and it didn’t work out.
