We don't have a lot of class-conscious filmmaking.

All but a very few of us are in debt. We exist as entities who borrow money and spend the rest of our lives making interest payments on a debt tally that never seems to budge. Whatever wealth we have, in labor, property or cash, is suctioned to the top.

It's the same the world over. A Hollywood production comes to town, and the locals all turn movie crazy.

It's rare to find a film that goes for broke and says, 'To hell with the consequences.'

Why are some people bullied? Because they are different. How? It doesn't matter.

We exist to have our wealth moved up the economic chain out of our reach.

James Cameron's films have always been distinguished by ground-breaking technical excellence.

Not everyone needs to be slammed into a category and locked there.

Dogs notice, they share, they draw conclusions, they like it when they're able to be of service and are touchingly grateful when they're praised.

There's something depressing about a young couple helplessly in love. Their state is so perfect, it must be doomed. They project such qualities on their lover that only disappointment can follow.

Nothing ever seems straightforward in Venice, least of all its romances.

Why is it that English, drama and music teachers are most often recalled as our mentors and inspirations? Maybe because artists are rarely members of the popular crowd.

People never think of themselves as choosing to be politically correct. They simply think in the way that they do.

It often strikes me that the actors in high school movies look too old.

That's what fantasies are for, to help us imagine that things are better than they are.

The right really dominates radio, and it's amazing how much energy the right spends telling us that the press is slanted to the left when it really isn't. They want to shut other people up. They really don't understand the First Amendment.

From a dramatic viewpoint, there are few professions that grant their members entry into other lives, high among them cops, doctors, clergymen, journalists and prostitutes. Perhaps that explains why they figure in so much television and cinema. Their lives are lived in the midst of human drama.

Sometimes miraculous films come into being, made by people you've never heard of, starring unknown faces, blindsiding you with creative genius.

If Hollywood stars speak out, so do all sorts of other people. Now Hollywood stars can get a better hearing.

'Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter' is without a doubt the best film we are ever likely to see on the subject - unless there is a sequel, which is unlikely, because at the end, the Lincolns are on their way to the theater.

The buried code of many American films has become: If I kill you, I have won and you have lost. The instinctive ethical code of traditional Hollywood, the code by which characters like James Stewart, John Wayne and Henry Fonda lived, has been lost.

It is quite possible for the vulgar to be funny, but to succeed, it must rise to a certain genius.

I believe that young people wearing hoods, unless they are very young, can be frightening. What are they hiding? Why don't they want to come out into the light with the rest of us? They may be perfectly nice, but the hoods send an uncertain statement.

Teaching prejudice to a child is itself a form of bullying. You've got to be taught to hate.