All the great legends are Templates for human behavior. I would define a myth as a story that has survived.
Before I start shooting I have all the actors know where we are going with every scene, what the intention is and where we are trying to get to.
I don't shoot a lot of takes-very few takes and very little film altogether-but what I do is create an environment-a context in which they feel safe and are able to take risks.
I look at the story, I look at the idea and just try to think of it in terms of that whole body of myth and see where the characters fit in and what they ought to be doing-all those archetypes are there to play with.
I only storyboard scenes that require special effects, where it is necessary to communicate through pictures.
I think that as a director you have to at the very least shape the script; structure it. Otherwise you're not really doing your job.
I wanted to work in anamorphic, which is the format I've shot many of my films in.
I was in Japan, and my assistant director had worked with Kurosawa. I used quite of number of Kurosawa's crew.
It's so easy to manipulate an audience, but it's nearly always clear that you are being manipulated. I think even people that are not critically attuned are aware of cynical manipulation in film.
My method is to do quite a lot of rehearsal-finding the characters and figuring out the scenes with the actors.
People often ask me if it was difficult to do the rape scene in Deliverance. But the difficult thing was to find the location.
There were two sides to David Lean: on the one side, he was kind of a rather stiff, disciplined Englishman. And then he had this kind of romantic side to him. I think being true to both sides of your nature is important.
What they always said in Hollywood was get close to the love scenes, and give the audience a little cover for the violence-always shoot through something so that the audience can feel they are protected.
What we see today in cinema is a kind of a new brutalism, where the camera changes speed and jumps around and all that stuff. It's post-modern: That doesn't particularly appeal to me.
When actors are being defensive and defending their position, that is when you get less than good acting.
You can't get an actor to do something that is beyond his range, so you have to be aware of the range of the actor and, if necessary, alter the part to suit the actor.
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