More Than Ninety Percent Of

I Think When You're Young And Have That First Burst Of Energy And Make Five Or Six Pictures In A Row That Tell The Stories Of All The Things In Life You Want To Say... Well, Maybe Those Are The Films That Should Have Won Me The Oscar.

Basically, You Make Another Movie, And Another, And Hopefully You Feel Good About Every Picture You Make. And You Say, 'my Name Is On That. I Did That. It's Ok.' But Don't Get Me Wrong, I Still Get Excited By It All. That, I Hope, Will Never Disappear.

I Know That I Come From Mid-20th Century America, Urban, Specifically Downtown New York, Specifically An Italian-american Area, Roman Catholic - That's Who I Am. And A Part Of What I Know Is There's A Decency To People Who Tried To Make A Living In The Kind Of World That Was Around Us And Also The Skid Row Area Of The Bowery; It Impressed Me.

An Interviewer Once Asked Me To Discuss My Collaboration With Elmer Bernstein, And Precisely Why I Chose To Work With Him. My First Thought Was: How Could I Not Work With Elmer, When I Had The Chance? Simply Put, He's The Best There Is-the Very Best.

The More You See, Especially Being Young, The More You See The Past, The More You Can Draw Upon That And The More You Can Make The Present And The Future. It's How You Process The Past And At Oftentimes In The Picture, There Are References To Certain Imagery From Certain Pictures, And Certain Novels.