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In my childhood, America was like a religion. Then, real-life Americans abruptly entered my life - in jeeps - and upset all my dreams.

Sergio Leone

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Sergio Leone
Age: 60 †
Born: 1929
Born: January 3
Died: 1989
Died: April 30
Actor
Composer
Film Actor
Film Director
Film Producer
Manufacturer
Screenwriter
The Eternal City
Bob Robertson
Americans
Dreams
Religion
Dream
Jeeps
America
Abruptly
Real
Entered
Life
Upset
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Childhood

More quotes by Sergio Leone

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There was also the myth of the western films. But my films are borrowed not from the story of the West in America but from the story of cinema.
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I never worry about what they think about me. Because I feel so far away from what my Italian colleagues have done that I almost automatically become an isolated director.
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I consciously chose a person like the bounty killer [of the Fistful trilogy] because he was the street sweeper of the desert, a man who put his life at risk exclusively for the money. I'm not saying that he went against the law, but he put himself within the wings of the law only when it was something that he could profit by.
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The very fact of seeking specialization is probably what makes America so great in these two hundred years. But also, the sensation that somebody who wants to understand America doesn't really need to visit it much.
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My mother was an actress. My father was an actor and a director. I am the son of filmmakers.
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Whoever would like to look and see what someone is saying behind all the show, glitter, scenery, whatever it may be, and see what ideas are being expressed beyond and below and above that, can do that, as well.
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Probably the greatest writer of westerns himself was Homer. His character were never all good or all bad. They're half and half, these characters, as all human beings are.
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I realized than an author cannot also be a producer.
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My films are often characterized by the lack of women present in them, except for this last one [Once Upon a Time in America].
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The world is in America. In Italy is only Italy. France is full of France. Germany is full of Germany. In a continent that contains the entire world, contradictions are, of course, constantly arising.
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Because the life that I live - the life that we all live - is filtered through [one's own] experience. It isn't necessarily optimistic when you look at the political phenomena, the different things that are going on in the world.
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[The director] has to, I feel, be one step back, not only from cinema, but also from politics and all these issues in order to tell and depict the situation that spreads to people.
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I even had success with commercials, which is strange, because out of the six ideas, two won the platinum Minerva in France - it's the Oscar for their commercials. One was about the Renault diesel and the other about the regular Renault.
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We're talking a very cultivated people, but I found as cultivated as they were, they were uninformed about the personages who weren't American. They knew everything about America, but much less about other countries.
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I had never thought of making a western even as I was making it.
Sergio Leone
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There's my pessimism. Because I didn't know yet that type of film is always going to become more extinct, that there won't be anymore. Because there will always be more films that win five Oscars like Terms of Endearment.
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I have to be honest about one thing. When I want to America, no on asked me how I was. Everyone always asked me, How much do you make?
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Sometimes, I even recite the role to the actor if it's not clear. And I beg them not to imitate me, because I'm not a good actor.
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It's very difficult to be original.
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I think that men of my generation - not me in particular - are among the most fortunate men in the universe.
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