I Don't Want To Be A Movie

My Ambition From The Very Beginning Was To Make A Good Part For Myself, Something Differently To What Lately I've Been Doing.

I Think That The Best Movies Are Made, Not From A Point Of View That Depends On Your Personal History, Whether It's The Color Of Your Skin Or The Politics That You Had Or The Place That You Come From, But From A Point Of View Of An Understanding Of Human Nature, An Understanding Of History, And An Understanding Of What Motivates People.

That [film What's My Line] Was Very Useful To Me Because It Had Branch Rickey In A Social Situation. Every Other Bit Of Film [42] That I Had Was Him Making A Speech.

American Graffiti Was The First Movie Where The Director Let Me Have Any Input. It Was The First Time Anyone Ever Listened To Me. George Thought My Character Should Have A Crew Cut, But I Wasn't Happy With That Idea. I'd Always Had Pretty Long Hair Back Then - In College, Particularly - So I Told George My Character Should Wear A Cowboy Hat. George Thought About It And He Remembered A Bunch Of Guys From Modesto, California, Who Cruised Around, Like My Character, And Wore Cowboy Hats, So It Turned Out That It Actually Fit The Movie.

The Capacity To Create [visual] Effects In The Computer Has Made The Job Easier, But It Has Also Introduced The Complexity That You Can With A Few More Keystrokes Generate Such A Busy Canvas That The Eye Doesn't Know Where To Go. You Lose Human Scale On An Event And You're Just Wowed By The Kinetics And The Visualization. But, Often In Those Cases I Feel You Lose Touch With The Human Characters And What It Is That They Would Feel And How They Might Feel, And That's Still The Most Important Part.