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There are directors, and there are authors. I think I am more of an author than a director.

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
Author
Director
Directors
Think
Thinking
Authors

More quotes by Sergio Leone

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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.
Sergio Leone
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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].
Sergio Leone
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I think that men of my generation - not me in particular - are among the most fortunate men in the universe.
Sergio Leone
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Cinema through spectacle, through the entertainment of spectacle, tells the story of many actual problems in life. Because who ever doesn't want to read between the lines can just enjoy the entertainment and the show and can go home happy.
Sergio Leone
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All the people I've met, many outside of cinema, knew everything perfectly about one thing or one subject or one area.
Sergio Leone
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America is so varied and exciting that after six months, you go back and find it completely changed.
Sergio Leone
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It's very difficult to be original.
Sergio Leone
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It is clear that the vehicle of the western was a very interesting vehicle for me to contraband some of my ideas.
Sergio Leone
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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?
Sergio Leone
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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.
Sergio Leone
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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.
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.
Sergio Leone
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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.
Sergio Leone
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Just go to Disneyland. You have the impact of how the Americans think, how they dream, what they desire, how they have a good time, what they prefer. I associate this with young people. But many times I think this infantile quality is much better than the false, incomplete concept of adulthood.
Sergio Leone
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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.
Sergio Leone
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I realized than an author cannot also be a producer.
Sergio Leone
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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.
Sergio Leone
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I can't see America any other way than with a European's eyes. It fascinates me and terrifies me at the same time.
Sergio Leone
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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.
Sergio Leone
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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.
Sergio Leone