Pastoral Resources

Throughout my career, when I was finished with the drawing for one film I would go up to the story department and help develop sequences. Sometimes these were for scenes that I would animate later on.

At that time, the people that were in the animated film business were mostly guys who were unsuccessful newspaper cartoonists. In other words, their ability to draw living things was practically nil.

I think Ingmar Bergman, Francoise Truffaut - all these people created images in my mind, beautiful pictures, I loved what was known at that time as the foreign film.

I had very strong feelings, so the chance to make a film that deals in an imaginative way with stuff you care tremendously about is a real high. It's a really amazing thing to be able to do.

That's why I'm really trying to produce my own stuff. This film was so good, because I produced it myself, and developed it, and made it with New Line, which is a smaller studio, so I was in control of a lot of stuff that I wasn't in control of for my other films.

I was influenced by European movies, old Fellini, old Kurosawa - any sort of foreign film.

I have no control over a film. I don't know what will be left on the cutting floor.

Being a film actor is very different from a theatre actor.

Film is a very young art that is still evolving. Soon, we shall reach a balance between content and technology.

Truffaut loved actresses, and he was very intense. All the actresses I knew wanted to do a film with him.

That's what I like about film-it can be bizarre, classic, normal, romantic. Cinema is to me the most versatile thing.

I like some of the early silent films because I love to watch how actors had to play then. What would interest me today is to do a silent film.

I wouldn't say no to being in a film with Jude Law. I love English actors.

I think the clothes in Belle de Jour are very important to the style of the film. Even today, it is still timeless.

For the first few years we lived in a tiny rented cottage at the bottom of a friend's garden. We often joked that there was plenty of film in the fridge, but not too much food!

You do the work and you want people to see it; but, um while I'm doing the work, the result doesn't matter at all to me. Ultimately, I don't, I don't care whether the film is - you know - some big giant box-office bonanza and I don't care if its a complete flop. To me, when a film gets made and it's actually finished it's a success. They're all a success in their own way.

It would be great to make a movie that had the style of a great '30's film.

I've always loved film more than theater.

To make a film and to sell it to the distributors you need a name.

If somebody had started on a remake of French Kiss before I announced my own film, I would have dropped my subject. If someone else starts after me, what am I to do?