Being A Father At A Later Age

I Know That I Come From Mid-20th Century America, Urban, Specifically Downtown New York, Specifically An Italian-american Area, Roman Catholic - That's Who I Am. And A Part Of What I Know Is There's A Decency To People Who Tried To Make A Living In The Kind Of World That Was Around Us And Also The Skid Row Area Of The Bowery; It Impressed Me.

I'm Often Asked By Younger Filmmakers, 'why Do I Need To Look At Old Movies?' I've Made A Number Of Pictures In The Last 20 Years And The Response I Have To Give Them Is That I Still Consider Myself A Student. The More Pictures I've Made In 20 Years, The More I Realize I Really Don't Know. And I'm Always Looking For Something Or Someone That I Could Learn From. I Tell The Younger Filmmakers, And The Young Students, That Do It Like Painters Used To Do—that Painters Do—study The Old Masters, Enrich Your Palette, Expand The Canvas. There's Always So Much More To Learn.

I Grew Up In The Lower East Side, An Italian American - More Sicilian, Actually.

You've Got To Love Something Enough To Kill It.

I Think What Happened There Was Just The Budget Would Be Too Big To Build These Sets Because Nothing Really Exists Here In New York Of That Period; You Have To Build It All.