It Was The Era Of

It's Very Clearly Stated In The Film: You Make Your Own Choices, And What You're Always Fighting Is Ego.

Show Business Is One Of Those Things That People Can Use To Get Themselves Out Of The Lower Rung Of Society.

When Ray Charles Is Concentrating He's Like A Piece Of Granite, Nothing Twitches, Nothing, ... He Sat For 25 Minutes Solid Like That, Like A Stone, And I Thought, 'oh My God, If He Doesn't Like It I'm Dead.' ... And Then Finally, After 25 Minutes He Started To Talk Back To The Screen. I Heard Him Say 'that's Right. That's The Truth.' .

I Make Films About Working Class People. All My Films Have Always Been About That. For Example, The Brothel Is A Workplace. It's Aberrant, But A Workplace Nonetheless. I Was More Interested As Opposed To Glamorizing And Saying, Oh, This Is A Great Erotic Place, It's A Place Of Business. The Commodity Is Sex.

But A Writer's Contribution Is Literary And A Film Is Not Literary. When You Take That Stuff Off The Page, And Cast The People Who Are Going To Fit Into Those Roles, That's What Being A Director Is.