Have you listened to the radio lately? Have you heard the canned frozen and processed product being dished up to the world as American popular music today?

The thing is there have been American movies that are similar to Solaris like Alien had a lot of things that are similar although it's also got the horror element.

In movies there are some things the French do that Americans are increasingly incapable of doing. One is honoring the complexities of youth. It's a quiet difficult undertaking requiring subtlety in a filmmaker and perception and patience from us.

American movies are often very good at mining those great underlying myths that make films robustly travel across class age gender culture.

What I liked about American movies when I was a kid was that they're sort of larger than life and I think I'm still suffering from that reaction.

I don't think people have been able to deal with the fact that African American filmmakers can make movies about life and relationships.

I guess maybe I try to make movies that are closer to real life than are many Hollywood movies. But I still try to stay within a commercial narrative a contemporary American vernacular.

I think as an American society when we're paying too many taxes or dealing with war we don't want to see sad things at the movies.

Movies as evidenced by a chorus of protesting and celebrating Americans influence broader trends.

If military movies were automatically successful we'd make nothing but military movies. But seriously patriotism is one thing that all Americans have in common.