I have made all my films for my children with the exception of my first film because my oldest daughter wasn't born when I was making the film about ….

World War II is smothered in sentimentality and nostalgia. What's interesting about Vietnam is that sentimentality is just not there, so you're given….

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. ….

I record all of my music with authentic instruments in a studio before we start editing, doing many, many versions. The music shapes the film as we e….

I read cover to cover every jazz publication that I could and in the New York Times, every single day reading their jazz reviews even though I didn't….

Louis Armstrong is quite simply the most important person in American music. He is to 20th century music (I did not say jazz) what Einstein is to phy….

I don't use composers. I research music the way I research the photographs or the facts in my scripts..

I think the problem with a lot of the fusion music is that its extremely predictable, its a rock rhythm and the solos all play the same stuff and the….

Write: write letters. Keep journals. Besides your children, there is no surer way of achieving immortality..

The way I work, the interview never becomes larger than the person being interviewed..

I think my expectations for myself are much more severe and much more direct. You can't work on a film for six years without being your own toughest ….

It follows the seasons, beginning each year with the fond expectancy of springtime and ending with the hard facts of autumn..

You don't work on something for six years and be blind to the myriad of other approaches..

I enjoy total creative control right now. Nobody tells me to make it longer, shorter, better, sexier, more violent, whatever..

Like a layer on a pearl, you can't specifically identify the irritant, the moment of the irritant, but at the end of the day, you know you have a pea….

One of the things I really like about Ford's films is how there is always a focus on the way characters live, and not just the male heroes..

Civics is in fact politics, and politics is how things work not only in the political realm but in every other realm. It may be this simple mechanica….

History's just been made for sale to an inside deal..

A jazz beat is a dynamic changing rhythm..

In most films music is brought in at the end, after the picture is more or less locked, to amplify the emotions the filmmaker wants you to feel..

We strain to listen to the ghosts and echoes of our inexpressibly wise past, and we have an obligation to maintain these places, to provide these san….