I was asked to perform at the Olympics Opening Ceremony. But I was up a tree in Borneo filming a documentary about Alfred Russel Wallace! So it couldn't be done.
The skyline in Alfred Hitchcock's 'Rope' is made up: no, you don't get the Waldorf and the Chrysler and the Empire State buildings and a dozen other magnificent structures in one window.
Then there are actors my age like Ethan Hawke, he's in 'Moby Dick,' I love his work. I've been lucky. Alfred Molina, he has real class.
When I was preparing 'Kiss Me, Kate,' I did go to the Museum of Broadcasting and watched an old kinescope of Alfred Drake doing the role on a television special. It was interesting, but I didn't feel any need to try to copy him.
It still amazes me how many musicians aren't really interested in engaging with their audience at all. Alfred Brendel, a pianist for whom I have the greatest respect, has described performance as a sacred communion between the artist and the composer. But what about the audience? Music is communication, a two-way street.
I liked that sort of thing, those one-off stories like 'Tales of the Unexpected,' 'Hammer House of Horror,' 'The Twilight Zone' and 'Alfred Hitchcock Presents.'
I've always loved those portraits that Alfred Stieglitz did of Georgia O'Keeffe over several years, which really convey the idea that there's not one image that can capture a woman, because we're changing all the time.
Every time you look at a house in Los Angeles, the real-estate agent will tell you that someone famous once lived there. It always seemed irrelevant to me: Does a property gain value just because Alfred Hitchcock used to eat breakfast there?
Shortly after my Ph.D., Alfred Kastler urged me to accept a teaching position at the University of Paris. I followed his advice and started to teach at the undergraduate level.
Alfred Hitchcock once told me, when I was analyzing a lot of things about his pictures, 'Clint, you must remember, it's only a movie.'
