The movies that made me want to make movies were action movies and thrillers and Kurosawa films you know where you have an opportunity every day to shoot it in an unusual way. I was looking for something like that.

'Immortals' is all action. I love action movies. That's really where I want to spearhead my career.

I feel like I'm a fighter. I've fought my whole life to get to where I'm at. I like fight movies. When someone gets knocked down I like to root for him to succeed.

When I was a kid going into the movies you weren't force-fed information everywhere you looked about what the movie was going to be.

I don't really care where movies come from as long as they're worth making.

In all the movies I'm in love with someone in my head. There's always love in a film somewhere. It doesn't matter even if it's an action movie.

Actors are steeped in a world of agents and where the next job is coming from and what are their expenses and what is the hotel like. You want to take them out of that world and dump them into another world so that when you meet them on the screen they don't seem like the guy who was in two others movies that year.

But then I go through long periods where I don't listen to things usually when I'm working. In between the records and in between the writing I suck up books and music and movies and anything I can find.

As far as writing I like watching bad movies. Nothing stops me in my tracks more than watching a great film like 'The Godfather' or 'Dog Day Afternoon' or 'The Graduate.' You watch one of those and you never want to write again. Whereas with bad movies it makes you think If that counts I certainly could write.

There are movies where we are interested in seeing people's lives without agreeing with what they're doing.

Where I live nobody who's fourteen is having sex and doing major drugs. And I think if you see it in the movies you may be influenced by it. I think it's so important to preserve your innocence.

It was like in Samoa when they'd put up a movie screen on the beach and show movies and the locals would run behind the sheet to see where the people went. It was pretty grim.

When videotape came so a lot of movies that I do have a kind of afterlife in video. Things where movies that I do would come and go they still come and go but you can go rent them and see them on TV.

We can now have action movies with two stars where one might be African American and one might be Asian American. One of them doesn't have to be white and the other one doesn't have to be the ethnic sidekick. We're way over that. And I think it's happening in society too.

I have three kids who like Harry Potter so I was sort of aware of it. You can't really move from it: it's on buses in stores it's everywhere. One of my kids has read the books the other two are too small but they like the movies.

It's the contemporary woman that movies don't know what to do with other than bathe her in a bridal glow in romantic comedies where both the romance and the comedy are artificial sweeteners.

I love these movies where it's just about the film. You don't have my face on the poster. It's all about the movie. I like that.

The reason I chose the movies that I did was based on where they were being filmed.

You know those movies where the people in the audience are screaming 'Don't go in that door!' because you know the killer is there? Well it is the same thing with this debt. We know how this ends.

In life and in movies it's a similar challenge where you have expectations and you end up in situations that are not meeting your expectations.

Movies are my religion and God is my patron. I'm lucky enough to be in the position where I don't make movies to pay for my pool. When I make a movie I want it to be everything to me like I would die for it.

I've always been an animal lover. I've grown up with dogs my whole life. I think that is what helped me get the role on 'Lassie' I was comfortable around the dog where many of the kids were afraid or intimidated by Lassie.

So where's the Cannes Film Festival being held this year?

Wherever you are - be all there.