There are certain pursuits which if not wholly poetic and true do at least suggest a nobler and finer relation to nature than we know. The keeping of bees for instance.

I don't think the competition's so rough within the majority of movies made in Hollywood.

I began to feel that the drama of the truth that is in the moment and in the past is richer and more interesting than the drama of Hollywood movies. So I began looking at documentary films.

At the time I came along Hollywood's idea of teen movies meant there had to be a lot of nudity usually involving boys in pursuit of sex and pretty gross overall. Either that or a horror movie. And the last thing Hollywood wanted in their teen movies was teenagers!

That's the way this business works: if your movies do well at the box office you will be offered more movies. It doesn't matter if you're a nice guy or you're a prick. If your movies do well there's a job waiting for you in Hollywood. It's not any more complicated than that.

I don't think Hollywood was trying to do anything with me. In fact they lost interest pretty quick. I think I got lucky briefly in the '90s and it just so happened that those movies were the opportunities that came my way. Then it just kind of stopped.

If I have to produce movies direct movies whatever to change the way Hollywood treats older women I'll do it. If I have to bend the rules I will. If I have to break them I will.

The way Hollywood portrays mothers - you're either all good and saint-like or you're all bad. And I think the real honesty of motherhood is not given a voice in movies. I miss that as an audience member.

Most movies suck even the independent ones. Hollywood is like baseball: Hit three good ones out of 10 and you're a Hall of Famer.

Some movies bring out the creativity in you. Every single audience member can become creative in the face of a particular movie. If you happen to like my films it's because my films provide a bed for you on which you can find your creativity. The Hollywood movies do not provide that for you.

It's so great in Hollywood now. You have people past 40 sitting and talking about serious stuff writing and making movies and TV but there's laser pistols and superheroes and alien monsters involved. It's viable and mainstream.

I guess maybe I try to make movies that are closer to real life than are many Hollywood movies. But I still try to stay within a commercial narrative a contemporary American vernacular.

You know when Hollywood does a great big blockbuster that really wraps you up in a world and lets you believe in extraordinary things that move you in some way in an almost operatic sensibility? That to me is the most fun I have at the movies.

If the goal is to get the best artists actors and filmmakers in the world to create the best movies Hollywood does a decent job. And I think no one would disagree with me that it also makes a ton of bad movies and employs a bunch of hacks.

Hollywood has the idea that movies have to be dumb. But especially movies for or about teenagers have to be really dumb!

I hadn't made a big-budget film and in Hollywood there's a sort of man and boys situation. You're a man you make $80 million movies! As if it's harder to make an $80 million movie. Well I guess businesswise it is because you have more executives to argue with.

Hollywood is throwing action movies at me.

I sure lost my musical direction in Hollywood. My songs were the same conveyer belt mass production just like most of my movies were.

I'm doing 'Les Miserables ' the movie. I've done a lot of musicals and a lot of movies and I know there are not a lot of people in Hollywood who have been down those two paths so I've been like 'Come on let's do a movie/musical.'

Later on they send me to Hollywood. To make movies. It was all new to me. I was only 21 years old.

I'm not a Hollywood basher because enough good movies come out of the Hollywood system every year to justify its existence without any apologies.

I wanted to do another movie that could make us laugh and cry and feel good about the world. I wanted to do something else that could make us smile. This is a time when we need to smile more and Hollywood movies are supposed to do that for people in difficult times.

To be wholly devoted to some intellectual exercise is to have succeeded in life.

It's a miserable life in Hollywood. You're up at five or six o'clock in the morning to be ready to start shooting at nine.