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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
Authors
Author
Director
Directors
Think
Thinking

More quotes by Sergio Leone

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My mother was an actress. My father was an actor and a director. I am the son of filmmakers.
Sergio Leone
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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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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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From Ennio [Morricone] I ask for themes that clothe my characters easily. He's never read a script of mine to compose the music, because many times he's composed the music before the script is ever written.
Sergio Leone
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It's very difficult to be original.
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've always had the sensation that people in America are always avant-garde. Very attentive to all the new innovations. But it's very specialized.
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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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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Young people of this century, like my son, didn't live through all those things that went on during that period of time, from 1930 to 1950. They're missing that experience. To go from a bicycle to a vehicle that takes somebody to the moon - only we saw this kind of thing.
Sergio Leone
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I'm not saying that the Americans had the same impact as the Jesuits, but I do see them as a very specialized populace, even in terms of being, to a degree, naïve. Because naiveté comes from lack of information.
Sergio Leone
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When you manage to express something with a look and the music instead of saying it with words or having the character speak, I think it's a more complete work.
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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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 think even in American schools, they must be studying in a specialized manner.
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 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
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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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Charlie Chaplin, too, through spectacle, contraband certain ideas, put them through, ideas that even today are not being expressed by great statesmen and politicians.
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.
Sergio Leone