Barry Levinson quotes:

I got a chance to work with Mel Brooks on two of his films: Silent Movie and High Anxiety.

I'm thinking, this is Robert Redford. You know, he's won an Academy Award, he's talking to me about directing a movie he's in. So you just think that it's Hollywood stuff or whatever.

Well it was sent to me, well because almost everything that is written in Baltimore is sent to me. And David Simon, who was a writer for the Baltimore Sun, spent one year following the homicide squad in Baltimore and he chronicled that period of time.

When I began to think about the head of the family, the storyteller, the rise of television which became the new storyteller, the break-up of the American family as an idea and then Avalon came.

All I try to do is create an atmosphere that seems comfortable enough, that it removes tension and everyone feels free. If they feel free then behaviour happens, small moments happen and that's what ultimately works the best for me.

Some actors are supposed to be very difficult, but I've not found that to be the situation.

Craig Nelson who is an actor and is in a show called Coach in the United States. We began to do some improvisational stuff and we used to get laughs and things.

It's always hard to explain why an audience ultimately responds to a movie.

First of all, just to get Diner made would have been an achievement in that I got a chance to direct.

I never really wanted to be an actor. And that was the beginning of it, I began to write things down and eventually became a writer on a television show.

It's those moments, those odd moments that you look for and sometimes by creating this kind of loose atmosphere you find those little moments that somehow mean a lot to an audience when they really register right.

It's finding those nonsensical pieces of conversation that we all do all the time. We do all the time. When we're talking on the telephone, there are arguments with people who agree when they both think that they disagree.

When I was growing up in Baltimore, the Colts were not just a team that played in the city. It was part of the city. Football players didn't make close to the money they make today and most took jobs in the off-season. Some were mechanics, others worked at furniture stores, and you could find them drinking at a neighborhood watering hole...

I worked at a local television station and I got a chance to direct and do all those things - worked kiddie shows, Ranger House show with the hand puppets and things like that.

They're intimidating the networks and levying these fines, so the networks are not sure of what they can or can't do.

I do know when you look at some ballplayer and all of a sudden he is the size of a truck something is wrong.

You don't always have to have the ending, but you want to have a satisfactory conclusion.

Apparently nobody really read it, it was a cheap movie, it fit their schedule in terms of things so fine, let the guy make that high school comedy. I used to work with Mel Brooks so they figured oh it's going to be one of those really silly movies and that's how it got made.

You have a movie and it proves itself and then certain things happen.

The interesting thing about movies, it's not always - y'know, you have to have structure etc and all those things, but an audience responds, in many ways, we walk away and certain things stay in our heads that are memorable.

I got involved with an acting school and studied for a couple years. They used to have improv exercises that you would work on and you would do improvs.

I think certain movies work and that is part of the magic of it all. We can't truly define why something succeeds.

There's no downside to having too much experience.

A lot of time mistakes are very interesting - you look for the behaviour that's not the one you expect.

I think it's a promising time which will show a lot of diversification that we've seen in the past.

I think we are seeing a radical shift in the business in general. The studios are making much more of the real big extravaganzas and there are other kinds of films that are coming out. I think you are going to begin to see more diversification that we've seen in the past.

I always think that there is the good and the bad of it all.

I'm fascinated by documentaries, to begin with. Because of the nature of television, as opposed to theatrical, documentaries can be in this long form and take you on a journey.

As soon as digital editing came about, I immediately made the switch to digital.

There was a time when I said, "I'm going to go do a television thing," after doing all these theatrical films, and heard, "Television? Why are you going to go back to television?" It's an interesting place.

Even back in the '90s, I shot certain things on something that wasn't digital then, but it was on VHS with a smaller camera and we would up it to film.

You do understand that you can't force the situation, but in terms of how you edit, you can define that to take the audience along, whether it be a storyline or a character moment that we can play out. The more experience you've had, the more beneficial it is, period.

I would give the cameras to the kids in the swimming pools and they would play with them, and then I would collect them and we would upload it. If you're in the process, you're there.