The public has an appetite for anything about imagination - anything that is as far away from reality as is creatively possible.
— Steven Spielberg
I wanted to do another movie that could make us laugh and cry and feel good about the world. I wanted to do something else that could make us smile. This is a time when we need to smile more and Hollywood movies are supposed to do that for people in difficult times.
I want to be the Cecil B. DeMille of science fiction.
I interviewed survivors, I went to Poland, saw the cities and spent time with the people and spoke to the Jews who had come back to Poland after the war and talked about why they had come back.
I've discovered I've got this preoccupation with ordinary people pursued by large forces.
Why pay a dollar for a bookmark? Why not use the dollar for a bookmark?
All of us every single year, we're a different person. I don't think we're the same person all our lives.
I'm always in favor of Israel responding strongly when it's threatened. At the same time, a response to a response doesn't really solve anything. It just creates a perpetual-motion machine.
Every time I go to a movie, it's magic, no matter what the movie's about.
Naturally, it is a terrible, despicable crime when, as in Munich, people are taken hostage, people are killed. But probing the motives of those responsible and showing that they are also individuals with families and have their own story does not excuse what they did.
If Bush, as I believe, has reliable information on the fact that Saddam Hussein is making weapons of mass destruction, I cannot not support the policies of his government.
I dream for a living.
You know, I don't really do that much looking inside me when I'm working on a project. Whatever I am becomes what that film is. But I change; you change.
When war comes, two things happen - profits go way, way up and all perishables go way, way down. There becomes a market for them.
I'm not really interested in making money.
I am an American Jew and aware of the sensitivities involved in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
I'd rather direct than produce. Any day. And twice on Sunday.
