When I was new, I didn't know where my career will go. Initially, my films were not even successful, but then I learned a lot from my mistakes.
If it helps me in the way that if this movie is successful, I get to make more films, great, and the more films that I make and the more interest that I'm allowed to cover, the better for me and the better, hopefully, for the people who like to watch me.
The way you dress or the car you drive or what you spend is to impress other people with how, I guess, successful and rich you are. But you're not, and you shouldn't, and who gives a damn what other people think anyway. So, that mentality, I think, is very destructive.
I feel as if I've been fairly successful with maintaining a cohesive tone between the work I make as a photographer and as a director.
Latin food suffers like Chinese. You can do marginal Chinese and be successful. You can do crappy Mexican and be packed.
Almost inevitably there are tensions in the picture, tensions between the outside world and the inside world. For me, a successful picture resolves these tensions without eliminating them.
It is ironic that it doesn't matter how successful I am in any other capacity: ultimately, my parents' marker is 'Do you have a wife?' and 'Do you have children?'
In our view, successful reform is not an event. It is a sustainable process that will build on its own successes - a virtuous cycle of change.
It's not that I don't want to do different films. The non-mainstream stuff that I did started to get successful... But for an industry which runs essentially on money, they do put you in a box.
If I give five flops, I won't get a job. You have to perform at the box office when you are at the top. No one is running a charity here. People are putting huge amounts of money to make movies, and they want the films to be successful. They have invested money in you, so it is your duty to make sure the film does well.
