“I don’t believe in leaving a scene in because it was really hard to shoot, or because it’s the reason you took the movie, or because you always wanted to work with an actor . . . If it’s not making the movie work, get rid of it.”

We should all relax about life because you don’t have a clue as to what’s really going on.

There is something about being a director where, for me personally, I get to . . . it’s the closest I’ll ever come to being able to be a stand up.

By definition a sequel can’t be original. So you’ve got to figure out what worked the first time around.

I haven’t read a review of one of my films for the best part of 10 years.

And then through editing, and finishing the effects and adding music, you get to make the movie better again. So I’m really hard on myself and on the movie.

And my feeling was if I was going to succeed as a director, I had to just be a director and give up the safety net of being a cameraman.

I’m not the one or two take guy, but I’m not the 20, 30, 50, 70 take guy either. If I do a bunch of takes, like more than five or six, it’s usually for some technical reasons.

These movies are like my kids. I just love them to death. Some of them go to Harvard and some of them can barely graduate high school.

I was seeing a lot of really good things about Get Shorty when it came out, and my wife pointed out that if you validate the good reviews, you also have to validate the bad reviews.

Michael Jackson wanted to be in Men in Black II. He told me he had seen the first Men in Black in Paris and had stayed behind and sat there and wept.

Michael worked one day. Everybody was a little freaked out and nervous because he’s a really big star. We were already working with really big stars, but Michael is Michael.

When I move from being a cameraman to being a director I looked at a lot of other cameramen who tried to make the move. And in each case they moved up their camera operator to be the DP, which really meant they didn’t want to give up being the DP, and really wanted to do both.

It felt scary because there was no auditioning, no rehearsing.

And to use my particular sense of humor, and hear people laughing, without me having to stand up in front of an audience and tell jokes.

I had to explain to him that it was a comedy.

The first cut I do is usually between five and 10 minutes shorter then the cut that we release.

To have a songwriter that wrote so specifically what I felt to be true… I’ve never been much of an actor either. If something is real for me, then I can do it.

You don’t have a lot of time to massage a scene into oblivion. It’s like you do it, you get a couple of good takes, and then you move on, so you have to be very spontaneous as an actor and have done your homework, and I like that.

I know actors come around and they always talk like that, but I don’t do publicity if I don’t like the film.

They say an actor is only as good as his parts. Well, my parts have done me pretty well, darling.

I always give one actor an emotion to make it very easy so he or she can root to it.

When I was a young actress, I was called in just to do my part, and I didn’t have any say or weight as far as any decisions go. But today, having worked as a producer and also having lived a little, I feel like I’ve found my voice more. I’m sure that it has influenced me as an actor and it will continue to do so.

Some actors come to the set ready to do their parts a certain way.

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.