That survival instinct, that will to live, that need to get back to life again, is more powerful than any consideration of taste, decency, politeness, manners, civility. Anything. It's such a powerful force.
To be a film-maker, you have to lead. You have to be psychotic in your desire to do something. People always like the easy route. You have to push very hard to get something unusual, something different.
I find that people find a way out of misery through humor and it's humor that's often unacceptable to people who are not in quite such a state of misery.
It's a good place when all you have is hope and not expectations.
It's not so much what you learn about Mumbai, it's what you learn about yourself, really. It's a funny old hippie thing, but it's true as well. You find out a lot about yourself and your tolerance, and about your inclusiveness.
Always changing genres, making very different films is a good idea. It's a way of making yourself feel vulnerable again, getting back to that innocence. As is working within a circumspect budget.
For us, destiny always feels... if you obey, it's almost a passive thing.
Although I behave in a quite reserved way in my personal life, give me a stage and I'll be as flamboyant as I can.
Brian Cox is the nicest guy, but he's so arrogant.
I want people to leave the cinema feeling that something's been confirmed for them about life.
As soon as you think you can do whatever you want and you have whatever great professional in the world waiting to work with you, then you are sunk.
I don't want people to sit there and objectively watch the film. I want them to experience it as something that's under their skin, so you try to make the films really tactile.
When they're good, there is nothing like a big film.
I mean suspense, twists are almost impossible these days.
Some of us are interested in directors, but really the vast majority of us are interested in actors. You experience the films through the actors, so they're all locked into your imagination in some kind of layer of fantasy or hatred or wherever they settle into your imagination.
The problem with being British... I don't know if it's me being British or being raised a strict Catholic, but you never really enjoy success.
The sun is the most important thing in everybody's life, whether you're a plant, an animal or a fish, and we take it for granted.
You can have great sequences with music, but if you don't have the acting you're bored after 15 minutes. Or not bored, but you're like, 'So what?'
Although computer chips now are thinner, they're more powerful, they're not as reliable. You'd harvest computer chips from the 1980s from all around the world because they're reliable.
I love that sense of change that you'd get in pop music every three minutes, every four minutes.
