A Director In Hollywood In My Time

I Never Regarded My Pictures As Very Much To Be Proud Of, Except In This, The Craft, The Style.

I Was Making Films About American Society, And It Is True That I Never Felt At Home There, Except Perhaps When My Wife And I Lived On A Farm In The San Fernando Valley. But I Always Wanted My Characters To Be More Than Cyphers For The Failings Of Their World. And I Never Had To Look Too Hard To Find A Part Of Myself In Them

My Idea At This Time, Which Was Slowly Developing, Was To Create A Comedie Humaine With Little People, Average People - Samples From Every Period In American Life.

Intellectualism Came Very Late To America. That's Why Americans Are So Proud Of It. I Found Very Few Real Intellectuals In America. But There Are So Many Pseudo-intellectuals.

For A House, Somewhere Near Los Angeles I Found An Old Church. Very Old, No Longer Used. So We Moved The Church To The Land, And I Took Off The Steeple, And I Got My Hands Dirty.