I come from a background of hanging out with friends and shooting videos with them, with funny stuff coming out of the group. I guess we got the same charge jocks get out of sports.

And shooting things in a documentary style was a good way to create tension and energy without money.

Basically, when I look at my life, I think I'm lucky to be given the opportunities I've had.

If you blithely do what you do and you're good at what you do, and try to be a decent person, you can succeed.

It was a wealthy family, and they heard me talk about movies, and they told me I should go into movies. That's the benefit of hanging out with rich people; they have no sense of what is or isn't possible.

Knowing what I do now, I don't know if I'd ever have the balls to go to film school, with no connections and no knowledge of the business side at all.

Usually you talk about directors in terms of the way they choose camera lenses or a kind of light to create a certain effect. But to me the most valuable commodity for a movie to create is a feeling of life, and that's what A Hard Day's Night has in spades.