I prefer the countryside to cities. This is also true of my films: I have made more films in rural societies, and villages, than in towns.
Most of the parents in India, especially in smaller towns, fear for daughters due to the inhuman treatment meted out to them. They want her to go away, saying, 'You're not my responsibility anymore.' I don't understand: why don't we nurture our girls?
All my stories take place on the West Coast - not the beach, but smaller inland towns. I feel homesick, and I find inspiration in capturing that.
I've lived in so many different towns - Guttenberg, Union City, West New York, Jersey City. We didn't have a lot of money, and we'd get kicked out of places a lot.
Growing up in Georgia, I used to think people up north or out west were so different. They're really not. They're just regular people who live in small towns. They grow up and try to raise families and have a job and go to church and play softball. It's that way everywhere.
In some of the middle colonies the towns and counties were both active and had a relation with each other which was the forerunner of the present system of local government in the Western States.
A guitar player goes on the road, and he misses his girlfriend for a while, but he manages to get along. A horn player gets out on the road, plays two or three towns, and then he'll get lonely, and next thing you know, he's packed up and left. It's better not to hire him in the first place.
Many Mexican directors are scared to shoot in Mexico City, which is why there are many stories in Mexican cinema about little rural towns, or set a hundred years ago.
Towns have to evolve. Towns have to grow up. But not at the expense of the real people.
It was remarkable to see from space how predictable people are. Our homes and towns are almost all in places with moderate temperatures, and they generally have the same shape - a thinly occupied outer blob of suburb surrounding a densely populated core, all based around a ready source of water.
