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I love strong women.
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What's amazing about 'White Heat' is that, even for its time, it's very truthful in the way it deals with violence.
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I know the power of going to Mount St. Helens, and to see that level of devastation is quite something - the power of tsunamis, etc. But it's human cruelty, the base level of humanity, that scares me most.
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I am very keen to do a film that's female-led.
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I think the environment is the biggest threat mankind has ever faced.
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In Australia in the '70s, there was a real embrace of different genres. And then George Miller did 'Mad Max' by the end of the '70s, the beginning of the '80s. And it was really thriving.
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I personally found 'Avatar' - the blue people, to me, looked like painted art from the seventies. It didn't have the realism as, say, the robotic machines.
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When you have a major movie star, and then they're surrounded by local extras, it takes me out or makes me more conscious of what's going on, as opposed to losing myself in the movie.
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I like to keep a calm set.
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It's great to make strong, powerful films, but in terms of people wanting to finance them, it's also very difficult.
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I like to do commercials that are more than just flogging a product. It needs to have something to say. It's always an opportunity for a director to say something substantial and interesting.
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We talk about that a lot: how, when you're under pressure, it brings out the best and the worst in people.
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What irritates me about sci-fi is that it got hijacked by video games and also became so high-concept it was all about ideas and gadgets and technology and nothing about the human experience.
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Everyone has a family, even if they're at war or fallen apart. It's the closest initial bond, and there's a sort of primal element to that. Your primary relationships are formed out of family.
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Basically, I frittered away the Nineties making pop videos and being pretty self-indulgent.
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It's such an intense thing to make a film.
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I love 'Alien' and 'Blade Runner' and '2001.'
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What I like is finding new angles on genres.
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I love working with ensemble groups of actors.
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I consider myself a humanist. Even if I do very dark worlds, I try to make those characters real humans as opposed to just cartoons.
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Social media, Facebook, Instagram, Twitter - I steer away from them. They're alienating us socially as well as bringing us together.
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It's the murkiness of humanity that I find endlessly fascinating.
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I'm actually a humanist, believe it or not, and I believe even when people are corrupted, even when they've gone to the dark side, they are still human beings.
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What was so amazing and inspiring about 'GoodFellas' was that it showed the foot soldiers; the people more at the bottom as opposed to focusing on the godfathers and the guys at the top.