But I went down to Venezuela and spend a few weeks going through jungles. It’s fantastic looking.

I allow an area for improvisation because the chemical things actors bring to stories make it not work.

It’s the story that counts.

But I think musicals are going to have to deal with important subjects.

West Side Story was terribly important because of the style of the dancing and the gangs of New York.

I use colors to bring fine points of story and character.

Dali was the great painter then and surrealism was a way of life.

If anybody reads a story in a magazine or book, different pictures compete in their minds.

I had given up the theater and everything propelled me into entertainment. And I didn’t resist it.

Designing Woman was written for the screen.

Color can do anything that black-and-white can.

Cedric Gibbons was the grand cardinal of the art department.

But I went down to Venezuela and spend a few weeks going through jungles. It’s fantastic looking.

Fortunately, John Houseman is a marvelous writer and he sat in on so many story conferences. He worked with Welles, you know, and he’s a marvelous man.

We shot that in all the real places where Van Gogh worked.

That’s what I think musicals will come to. No backstage stories, nothing of that sort.

But surrealism is present in most of my pictures.

In the Thirties, when I was in New York, I did the first surrealistic ballet in a show of mine.

No, I only like whether I like the story or not, essentially see something in it that isn’t completely there.

I made three films with Douglas, two with Charles Boyer.

I always liked the Van Gogh story because I was terribly involved in that.

I learn new things all the time.

American films are terribly popular all over the world and American movie stars are terribly important. I don’t know why.

I always have coffee without sugar, you know. Just cream.

I see wonderful films by Bertolucci, Visconti, and Fellini.

I started out to be a painter and was born into the theater.

It’s always the story that interests me.

I’ve worked with an awful lot of people. Katy Hepburn, Spencer Tracy.

I seem to be drawn to things that actually happen.

The Pirate is surrealism and so, in a curious way, is Father of the Bride.

Nowadays the audience has changed. No one can anticipate the audience.