A director shouldn't get in the way of the movie, the story should.
And I don't think I'm giving away any secrets here, but there are a lot of terrible scripts in this town.
And I've come to a place where I'm really very anxious to be focusing on getting my own movies made and not wrestling with other people's problems and other people's deadlines.
And it's really not an easy process to make something and then release it to theaters and have nobody want to show up.
As a director it's wonderful to sneak up on an audience and surprise them that way.
Because I've really got to fall in love before I want to direct again. I don't want to do it just to do it.
Boy, I'd hate to shoot on tape or disc or whatever the hell they're talking about. I love film.
But hey, as they say in The Godfather, this is the business we have chosen. Things turn out, sometimes they don't.
Even in The Green Mile, towards the end, there were moments where I was moved and the water still turns on.
Every aspect of directing is kind of a difficult one for me.
I am fascinated with times past.
I don't have a head full of ideas I'm dying to write.
I find it doesn't pay to take oneself too seriously. And I like that sort of irreverence when I see it with other people.
I love having a context of a certain period of time in which to tell a story.
I mean, when I was a kid, I was into Star Trek and science fiction and horror and I loved monsters.
I really don't think that by the time we're trying to get the audience to see Fahrenheit 451 they're going to be confused with Michael Moore's movie at all.
I think a story should take as long to tell as it is appropriate to that particular story.
I think audiences are starting to get really hungry for content again.
I think once you've finished a movie you really have to detach from it so that you can come back and watch it as an audience member.
I think that by the time I got to do Green Mile, which was maybe five years later, yes, you're absolutely right. I had gotten a real sense of Shawshank being something special or even more than I had intended possibly.
I thought I could either be paralyzed by seven Academy Award nominations and this thing meaning so much to so many people, or I could just go ahead and continue doing what I do, try to tell the story as well as I can.
I'll take a walk up on the hill or whatever, just get out and let my mind float around the problem rather than trying to attack it directly.
I'm also lucky that way - I can do what I like. That's a big luxury.
I'm not nominated this year, though the film is, and I do remember when I got nominated for The Shawshank Redemption. It was really stressful - stressful because you worry you're going to lose and you worry you're going to win.
I'm not the kind of guy who takes directing lightly... I'd never make an indifferent film and if you do have to live with a project for a couple of years, then you've really got to love it.
I'm tired of seeing the same movie over and over again.
If I read a script that I have enormous respect for and I don't know what to do to it, then I'm going to be honest about that.
If we're going to embrace the death penalty, then at least let's look at it honestly for what it is. If we're going to dismiss the death penalty, let's look at it honestly for what it is.
It gave me a moment's pause, because I certainly wasn't looking for the next prison movie to make.
It's been a great run of good fortune for me as a writer.
Let me put it this way, as a fan myself, and I'm talking a real hardcore Indiana Jones fan, the movie I wrote is the movie I wanted to see.
Look, the true answer is The Mist is something I've been wanting to do for 10 years.
Mission Impossible 3 was actually a total gas for me. It was really fun.
My editor and I had a theory that if the movie engages their attention, they won't mind sitting there for three hours - which I find true myself.
My favorite was the Green Mile parody in Mad Magazine.
Some of us have great original ideas and some of us depend on adaptations.
Steven Spielberg's a huge influence on a lot of people, and Schindler's List still looks like a great movie.
The fascinating thing about this third one is it's a much more realistic and much more gritty approach to a Mission Impossible movie than has been seen before.
The good ones - The Dead Zone, Stand By Me and Misery - they didn't leave Steve King out of it.
The tone of The Green Mile is so delicate and dramatic.
There was obviously a concern, because nobody sets out to make a three-hour movie. Nobody particularly wants that.
This is one of the reasons I found Saving Private Ryan to be such a powerful film. Because if we have to wage war, okay, but let's look at it really for what it is.
To me, length is an artificial and arbitrary factor in a film.
Visual storytelling of one kind or another has been around since cavemen were drawing on the walls.
Well, I think it's important to always have a sense of humor.
Well, if you focus on the human story, everything else is gravy.
Well, you don't want to go too far afield with a character like Indiana Jones. You want to keep it somewhat real but my God, there's certainly an element of the fantastic with Indiana Jones that you lack with Ethan Hunt.
With something like Shawshank, there are no fur and things to get distracted by. It's just a great human story.
You go to see a movie nowadays, and its completely pre-digested for you. You leave it in the theater the moment you walk out the door; you don't take it home with you.
You never know where your best intentions will get derailed, where challenges can defeat you.
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