Quotes

Life has been good to me. I keep making pictures. Every year I make something. As long as I keep working, I have nothing to complain about. And the films I've made have all had some point to them. Otherwise, I wouldn't have felt they were worth doing. You have to have some direction in which you're headed and a destination which you have to arrive at by the end of the film, so that you feel it was a satisfactory trip. Some kind of personal statement has to be made.

Sometimes the scenes that really make a movie work are the little scenes that have nothing to do with advancing the action, but just add a little something.

[on how he came up with the idea of the aliens' signature extended pinky finger on his series Les envahisseurs (1967)] The extended pinky used to be a symbol of effeminacy . . . you know, the effete [person] holding a glass of champagne with the pinky extended? When this show was done back in the '60s, the homosexual community was kind of a submerged, invisible community. People were living secret lives. I thought, here are these aliens living amongst society, keeping their true identities secret, their true selves secret, and this is funny because the pinky kind of symbolizes homosexuality in some way, and nobody will get the gag, but I'll put it in there anyway.

Some kids were great playing baseball; other kids were great at playing the piano; some kids were terrific at math. Writing was just something that came naturally.

I want the picture to be about something -- not just action and violence.

Many of the A-movies are long forgotten. They're boring, slow, and tedious. The B-movies are fast-moving, exciting, and energetic.

I've gotten a great deal of enjoyment out of making these films. There's always a sense of the danger of the unknown. And, yet, you have to proceed with the absolute belief that everything will work out fine - and it has. Isn't that what life is all about?