Nothing is more pleasant for me than to be on location in the country that I love, in any of our western landscapes, being out there with a camp outfit and a film company.

I had done some work when I was starting in with photography on westerns, and photographing them was the greatest pleasure I had. If I was ever qualified for anything, it would have had to do with making westerns. But as I started working on pictures with people like Katharine Hepburn, I got further away from the thing I really liked to do.

It's like trying to be a traffic cop and write a poem at the same time. You need an executive head to handle all the vast paraphernalia of moviemaking. You need another, more sensitive head to get the delicate human emotional values you are trying to put on film.

I personally like to see films that are the work of as singular a consciousness as possible.

Only the picture matters. It's what goes on the screen that counts.

I'm interested in all the new ideas, such as 3-D and widescreen, but I don't believe the technical method of presentation is the real important thing.

I was on a picture for four or five days, had an opportunity to be on a set, and the assistant cameraman kept showing me things. One day I climbed the fence, knowing they needed an assistant cameraman. A couple of days later, I was one. The first day or two, it was pretty disastrous, but I knew something about photography, and I caught on quick.

In most Westerns, you know, people are shooting off guns all the time until you don't even notice it anymore.

I was fascinated by all of it. The sounds of the theater and the audience, their rapture when a play took over and moved them and held them quietly... When the audience was truly moved, it was absolutely quiet. They were in a communion because they were learning the truth about themselves.

Three takes. You're either going to get it, or you're not going to get it. There's no use persisting; it just had to work that way.