Citations

[on Fred Ward] He's the first cult actor of 2000.

I shot a lot of close-ups on this movie 'cause there's like a dual mystery, she's searching through her haunted past to find some truth and she's also following an external mystery where she comes to think she might be the killer.

[on Ashley Judd's character driving a jet black Mustang in Instincts meurtriers (2004)] That's a direct homage to Bullitt (1968). And we looked a lot at Steve McQueen. In a way we wanted to have a woman character with the kind of energy that Steve McQueen had. Even though Steve McQueen was a huge star in his day, my feeling is that he was underrated. Now that Steve McQueen's gone, we miss him. I don't know of anybody who has that kind of kinetic energy that he brought to bear in movies like that.[2004]

That's a little homage in a way to that and also to create that sort of creepy atmosphere that Hitchcock did. Sueurs froides (1958) was one of his great movies that was shot right here in The City [San Francisco] and it's about a woman and the psychological twists and so forth.[2004]

It just seemed to me to be a great story, set back in its time but something that seemed to have relevance for our time. Now that the film is coming out, it looks like we're back in another time where repression of expression is all the rage.

But you know, there's always a danger nowadays that films are gonna be brought up to Canada for budget reasons. And that's something that really concerns me.

And I liked this extreme character of de Sade.

The truth is, I'm drawn to all kinds of things.

I mean San Francisco is not only the home of a lot of these great noir films or psychological thrillers, if you will, like Vertigo, but also great cop movies. Whether it's L'Inspecteur Harry (1971) or Bullitt (1968). In this movie I wanted to sort of combine those two genres, you know that's what the script called for. But you know, there's always a danger nowadays that films are gonna be brought up to Canada for budget reasons. And that's something that really concerns me. I'd love to make all my movies here if the subject matter was right. When I did L'Invasion des profanateurs (1978) and L'étoffe des héros (1983) here, I thought I'd be making those great careers like Woody Allen where you get to shoot a movie in your own city every year. Nowadays they either want to move the film to Canada or in some cases they go to Prague or Romania or they want to keep 'em down in L.A. This one, even though it called for San Francisco, I think they wanted to initially shoot part of the film up here, you know get the exteriors and then go back to L.A. We really fought to get it up here and I think Paramount was really pleased. We had a great crew up here, we were on schedule and way under budget. I want more movies to come here. [2004]

I read, therefore I'm interested in writers.

The danger is not so much in the economic structure of a society but in its intellectual structure.

They are always very lax about putting restrictions on violence for children's movies, which I think is much more harrowing than sexuality for children.

You can have a lot of unhappiness by not having money, but the reverse is no guarantee of happiness.

Whatever you think of de Sade, he was a complex figure and we should not look for easy answers with him. He was, strangely perhaps, against the death penalty, and he was never put in prison for murders or anything like that.

Similarly, the Marquis is presented in this film as someone who would disturb the status quo and therefore must be kept imprisoned.

To me, thoughts are fun and art is fun. The strength of our society should not be idle entertainments but the joy of pursuing ideas.

What's really interesting about that is that a lot of these words that were incendiary in their time now seem almost harmless and laughable, because they have this archaic quality.

Whereas European films have traditionally been able to go into adult relationships. I think there's a huge audience in America for those kinds of films.

[on L'insoutenable légèreté de l'être (1988)] I thought it was probably unfilmable at first. But I started working with Jean-Claude Carrière, and we decided that instead of duplicating the elaborate, musical structure of the book, that we would try to make a movie that moved in more of a straight line. We made a very drastic decision very early on to take out the book's most interesting character, the narrator, who was the guide through the story. We took the philosophical overlay out of it and tried to bury it in the drama of the story. I've always described it as an intimate epic.