If you're watching comedy movies, go back and check out the Marx Brothers in 'Duck Soup,' or Buster Keaton in 'The General,' or Laurel and Hardy or W.C. Fields or whatever - and see what pure talent really was, so that you can see where it came from, and then you can sort of gauge it from there.
I like to make films about my heroes.
The documentaries are one thing - I was highlighting someone else's work, someone else's genius. Once I had to find my own voice, I'm glad I was a little bit older and had some confidence and had all these great inspirations to draw from.
I have some kind of knack for getting to know or becoming very close with people I've long admired.
Kurt Vonnegut and I - it's not an exaggeration to say we were best friends. And I grew up just idolizing him.
My paid gigs allow me to pay for my documentaries, like a drug habit, I suppose. If I'm lucky enough to be working steady, however, it leaves little time for the documentary hobby.
A few months ago, a friend emailed to simply ask, 'Do you get a piece of this?' The message included a link to a site selling T-shirts emblazoned with 'Directed by Robert B. Weide.' My wife soon ordered two.
Sit down at your computer or open your nearest mobile device and Google these words: 'Directed by.' What's the first predictive text that comes up? Martin Scorsese? Quentin Tarantino? Ingmar Bergman? Chances are the first name Google suggested was Robert B. Weide. That's me. Sort of.
Ask any lawyer - if a prosecutor thinks he can win a case, he'll prosecute it.
I've said it before, and I'll say it again - one can believe in Woody Allen's innocence without presuming Dylan Farrow to be a liar.
The catch in the industry is that if you want to get a picture made for little money, you have to get a big star. But the two are usually mutually exclusive.
