My version of One Night Stand is so different from Mr Eszterhas's that he asked to have his name taken off the project. I think New Line felt they'd been landed with an expensive turkey and I was hot that week, just after Leaving Las Vegas. They offered it to me, I read it, didn't like it, they said I could do what I liked with it. One of my favourite films is Truffault's The Woman Next Door - I think it is his best film. And I always wanted to do an English language version of it, so this was a big influence on my rewrite. I originally offered it to Nicholas Cage, but I couldn't see him for dust, and I was very happy with Wesley Snipes's amazing performance. It is one of my favourite films, of my own. It got a terrible critical pasting in the states, but fared much better in Europe.

Talking of writing (cheap segue into my new book), The 36 Dramatic Situations is a rewrite of a French theatre classic written in the late 19th century. I thought it was vital to update this interesting concept for cinema. In a way, I could describe it as 36 essays on the differences between film and theatre; something that aspiring screenwriters need to be aware of. Also the book examines cliched attitudes, particularly towards gender (the dominate male, the submissive female), as well as race and religion. The book clearly reminds us that "drama comes directly from the original Greek drama and biblical morality". The family is a huge deal in the book. Given the fact that there are supposedly 36 dramatic situations, I developed a pack of cards which enable the writer to use the element of chance in the creative process - take three cards, and then place them in a sequence and let your imagination run wild. I've used the cards extensively over the last year, and what is fascinating is that I find myself in areas of drama that I would never normally choose, and it has opened up so many possibilities in terms of pure storytelling.
The book comes out this week, but I've had to develop the cards myself via Kickstarter and the campaign begins next Monday.

Under the Volcano (John Huston) worked for me. They took a section of that very dense, Lowry novel and that was the film. Novels usually don't make good films. It is too difficult to condense.

But a good novel would fit far more successfully into the new long form TV format. Some years ago, I explored the possibility of adapting Donna Tartt's The Little Friend, but I heard on the grapevine that she'd been so disheartened by the studio shenanigans around her first novel The Secret History that she was no longer interested.

With Leaving Las Vegas, I took a specific approach. I xeroxed the novel and cut into scenes, and then made three piles: 1) could work in a film, 2) might but not sure where, and 3) absolutely not. I pasted everything in the 1) pile and wrote some transitions, left it for a couple of months, did a second pass where I started using some of the 2) pile. By the end, I was dipping into the 3) and using that material for the scenes with Elisabeth Shue and her therapist.

Absolutely. Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers, particularly in the light of certain recent successes within that genre. When I teach film, I show a clip of Fred and Ginger and point out that they are dancing, singing, and acting... ALL AT THE SAME TIME. Not only that, it seems to be sublime poetry. I don't think it has ever been equalled. And when I research the technology that was involved, I am in awe of what was achieved. This was a high spot in the history of film.

When I first started making films, I felt sidelined. I was watching television and the actors were relating to the cinematographer. The cinematographers sometimes are very powerful and felt that they owned this territory. A lovely French cinematographer, Jean Francois Robin (Betty Blue), shot The Browning Version for me. At a certain point, he suggested that I operate the second camera. It was a revelation. Suddenly, I had contact with the actors.

My next film was Leaving Las Vegas. I owned a 16-mm Aaton camera and Declan Quinn, my DP, was open to the idea of 16-mm and me, operating second camera. This was a great experience. I haven't really looked back from that.

I have operated the camera on every film ever since. 35-mm, 16-mm, Super 8 video, etc. I'm about to shoot a short film which is one of the sequences in the feature I Love Rotterdam. I will be shooting on 16-mm. I will be recording sound on an analogue tape recorder, the legendary Nagra.

I don't feel it adds to the work load. I'd rather be working than watching TV.

I was an actor, albeit in working performance art environments. And also as a musician, I am aware of the dynamic between performer and audience - and how scary that can be, as well as exhilarating.
I work on the assumption that all actors can act. The question is: are they the right actor? And what is their tempo and dynamic? Some actors get there quickly, first take; other actors take much longer. You have to be sympathetic to the individual needs of the actors, at the same time aware of the ticking clock. So deciding went to "help" the actor becomes a crucial decision. Every situation is different. Ultimately, I like actors, and this helps.

Good question. I use it all the time. And have spent the last two months redesigning and updating it, based on using a 15-mm bar system, combining it with bits of equipment acquired cheaply from the internet. And it has been a revelation.
I'm using it with a Canon C300 and the new NIkon D5, adding follow focus and a 7-inch monitor and it is working beautifully.
I'm talking to Manfrotto about relaunching it and if not them, would love to find a small British company and stay local.

I appreciate how difficult this is. David Lynch suggests you go fishing and wait until something bites, then take it from there.

Clifford Brown is a jazz trumpet player, who combines technique with poetry. I love him on ballads. Miles is always there, as is Louis Armstrong. Have been listening to a lot of Maria Callas. Sometimes I listen to Resonance Radio - there is often some surprising music that I haven't heard before.

I have just done an interesting recording for Radio 3, for the show Essential Classics, which goes out the first week of July. I tried to come up with a really eclectic list of 12 tracks - Charles Ives, 4th of July is pretty amazing and probably the most avant garde piece of classical music I have ever heard.

1) Good question. I like to spend enough time so that characters can present themselves to me. Then their dialogue seems more organic, rather than expositional. Exposition is sometimes necessary, but not as necessary as a lot of writers seem to think. In my new book, The 36 Dramatic Situations, I open with a quote from Bergman: "Cinema is the ongoing exploration of the human face". And therefore exposition can be a visual event, rather than some hokey dialogue.
2) I wish I had a quick answer for this. Final act resolution is the supreme test of a writer. I notice in the new 'Mecca' of TV long form drama, this various problem has most definitely not gone away. One witnesses the same desperate attempts to land the big jumbo jet because the fuel is running out.
I think this mode of indulgence is something to be very wary of. One could compare it to the advent of the 12- inch vinyl in the 1950s, where we went from the perfect 3 and a half minutes to the idea you could take 20 minutes for a solo. Which was fine for Charlie Parker and John Coltrane, but extremely painful and boring for many of the disciples.

It was made for TV, for Channel 4 - it was my big break into film, thanks to Walter Donoghue and David Rose. At that time, it was virtually impossible to break into film and Channel 4 was the lifeboat for myself and many of my contemporaries. The House was developed first as a performance piece at the ICA and various European venues, and I was incorporating film into live performance. Incorporating live music with recorded music.
It was a very exciting period for me and I remain excited by the possibilities of live performance and film combined. It is definitely on my CV - I don't control the media....

The performance art work he did with Theatre X and the Wooster Group. They did some very avant garde performance art in the 70s and 80s.

I heard it by chance, in South Africa at the end of a long shoot for a commercial. And I was very taken by it. It is a live recording and it has great energy. The band is super tight. It works. I didn't even know the original when I heard Michael McDonald's version.
Nic Cage is a nutter, and used to be much more professional. He was supposed to be the lead in a feature I was doing last year and he jumped ship in the first week of preproduction. Didn't call, didn't email - just jumped. And I hear that is becoming a habit. Shame, as he can be a great actor.

In 2000, I did a Q&A conference with Steven Soderbergh in LA, in which we talked about the future of digital versus film. At that point, the audience which mainly consisted of cinematographers, were convinced that film would be here forever and digital was a kind of a blip.
Steven and I talked about digital filmmaking and he made the point that there would be 10 times as many bad films on the market as there are now. I made the point that there would be therefore 10 times as many good films on the market.
I think we were both right and both wrong. it is a big subject. And it is political in the sense in that it rests on the matter of distribution and film business.