I would vote for the man who’s lived life, who’s done different occupations, who’s been out in the real world and struggled to make a living, struggled to raise a family, struggled with life as it exists. So I’d vote for experience, honest experience.
I look at Homer and The Odyssey and all the disparate adventures this guy goes through, and then he returns home and the question is, is he the same man who left?
I do believe there are leaders who are like lightning and they come along and they lead. The Lincolns of the world, the Alexander the Greats, they do exist. They have existed.
The only home I had was with Warner Bros. during the ’90s. I made four movies with them then. Natural Born Killers, JFK, Heaven and Earth. Any Given Sunday was the last. And that was the end of the Terry Semel/Bob Daly regime.
I’d like to do a story about the medieval ages where in every scene you’d sort of feel that you were in the 12th century. That would be great to get that feeling.
Get the overall. Some of my films may have been crude at times, or tough, or missed the points, but I’ve tried to get the overall in. I think that’s more important. You may miss a thing or two, but you move faster. If you can do it in three takes, do it in three takes.
A woman can be very beautiful and an ideal model and she will photograph incredibly well, but she’ll appear in film and it won’t work. What works is some fusion of physical beauty with some mental field or whatever you call it. I don’t know.
