When I'm Actually Assembling A Scene, I

Looking At A First Assembly Is Kind Of Like Looking At An Overgrown Garden. You Can't Just Wade In With A Weed Whacker; You Don't Yet Know Where The Stems Of The Flowers Are.

The Notion Of Directing A Film Is The Invention Of Critics - The Whole Eloquence Of Cinema Is Achieved In The Editing Room.

Most Of Us Are Searching-consciously Or Unconsciously- For A Degree Of Internal Balance And Harmony Between Ourselves And The Outside World, And If We Happen To Become Aware-like Stravinsky- Of A Volcano Within Us, We Will Compensate By Urging Restraint. By That Same Token, Someone Who Bore A Glacier Within Them Might Urge Passionate Abandon. The Danger Is, As Bergman Points Out, That A Glacial Personality In Need Of Passionate Abandon May Read Stravinsky And Apply Restraint Instead.

The Conversation' Was The First Film I Edited On A Flatbed Machine - A Kem Editing Machine. I've Been Using Final Cut Or The Avid For 12 Years Now, So I Was Interested In Looking At This Film And Seeing If I Could Tell If It Had Been Edited The Old Way.

There Are Two Kinds Of Filmmaking: Hitchcock's (the Film Is Complete In The Director's Mind) And Coppola's (which Thrives On Process). For Hitchcock, Any Variation From The Complete Internal Idea Is Seen As A Defect. The Perfection Already Exists. Coppola's Approach Is To Harvest The Random Elements That The Process Throws Up, Things That Were Not In His Mind When He Began.