Who says the film studios rule the roost?
Here’s the thing: they can write a mean letter, they can write a mean memo, but these guys don’t have any real fight in them. If you’re an artist, as opposed to a careerist, and your movie is more important to you than a career in this town, they can never beat you. You have a loaded gun, and you know you’ve got what it takes to put it in their faces and blow their heads off. It’s about never taking the gun out. It’s about never touching the gun, never raising it, never pulling the trigger, never blowing their heads off. It’s about not going there — but knowing you can. So, if you have to flash it, it means something. Violence is one of the most cinematic things you can do with film. It’s almost as if Edison and the Lumiere brothers invented the camera for filming violence. The most cinematic directors, they’re taking cinema and exciting you. I really do think about it like that. I’m doing my own thing, but I’m thinking about the audience, too, though not in a manipulative way. I am th
