I had been very impressed with the voiceover of ‘Apocalypse Now,’ with Martin Sheen’s voice. That was a great voiceover; it really internalized the Martin Sheen character, who was essentially fairly low key and didn’t say a lot during the whole movie. But he thought a lot, so I always thought that was really great.
Egypt was – as it is now – a confluence of cultures, as a result of being a crossroads geographically between Africa, the Middle East and Europe.
Politics is very interesting and always leads to conflict.
Technology will need to make many more huge leaps before one can ever view films with the level of picture and sound quality many film lovers demand without having to slide a disc into a player, especially with the technical requirements of today’s 3D movies.
I’m fundamentally a positive person. Otherwise, I wouldn’t be doing some of the insane movies that I do.
Because I was a kid from north of England, the only films I had access to was not alternative cinema, which in those days would be foreign cinema; I would be looking at all the Hollywood movies that arrived at my High Street.
As a filmmaker, deep blacks are essential, and in my experience, no technology captures those attributes as well as Plasma.
Once, I got slaughtered after ‘Blade Runner’ by Pauline Kael: three pages of slaughter. I was so offended, I would never read any more press.
I come out of TV. I come out of live television, BBC drama: that’s where I started first as a designer, then a director. Then I went independent TV, then television advertising.
Unfortunately, we don’t seem to learn from history, do we? And you’d think we would.
I don’t get attached to anything. I’m like a good antique dealer. I’m prepared to sell my most valuable table.
I’m agnostic because I went through the usual process of parents insisting you go to church, and yet they didn’t. So there’s me, sitting in the chairs, thinking, ‘Jeez, why am I here? I’d rather be playing tennis, seriously.’
I watched Someone to Watch Over Me the other night. I thought it was a really good movie. It’s a great movie.
People say I pay too much attention to the look of a movie but for God’s sake, I’m not producing a Radio 4 Play for Today, I’m making a movie that people are going to look at.
Pages: 1 2
