I wouldn't be happy to be a specialist. There are some very interesting artists in history who refused to be nailed down into a category, like Da Vinci or Jean Cocteau. You could say Cocteau was a great poet but also a film-maker, interested in theatre, sculpture, and could never identify with any of these forms exclusively.
I wanted to meet other artists. I suppose I simply felt that I was taking pot shots at clay pipes. Pop! Down goes Gertrude, down goes Jean Cocteau, down goes André Gide.
A few friends and me used to go and watch Bunuel, Carne, Cocteau... Cocteau and Bunuel were surrealism. And I was very excited by that. 'Un Chien Andalou', especially.
And I was very, very much influenced by the films of Jean Cocteau and by Sartre and everything that came out of France because it was closer than America or England.
The cinema is - in Jean Cocteau’s famous words - ‘a dream that can be dreamt by many people at the same time’.
You don't leave the film alone. You have a new audience, and you have a new medium. Why would you leave it alone? Film is not an antique. It's not a relic. It's not a Leonardo da Vinci. I don't want someone painting over a da Vinci or Rembrandt. But these movies aren't that.
One of the appeals of William Carlos Williams to me is that he was many different kinds of poet. He tried out many different forms in his own way of, more or less, formlessness. He was also a poet who could be - he was a love poet, he was a poet of the natural order and he was also a political poet.
My introduction to art history was like everybody else's. You see an art history book that has works by Rembrandt and Leonardo da Vinci and Michelangelo. Yes, these things are great. But I don't see a reflection of myself in any of these things I'm looking at.
I'm a producer. I'm a musician. And my job is to come in and, you know, put - you know, I treat all of the artists that I work with, like, you know, the way da Vinci was looking at Mona Lisa, you know, there's an interesting backdrop.
I grew up as an artist. Science fiction allows for design and creatures and guns and all the stuff that I like as well. So I think most of the films I make, I'm sure, will be in that category. But I can also see myself making a film like 'Black Hawk Down,' and I could also totally do horror.
I will say that adapting a character like Da Vinci really wasn't that dissimilar from doing Batman or Superman. Because all three of these guys are really iconic figures, and yes, Da Vinci was historical, but there's clearly been a lot of mythmaking about him, and a lot of things have been attributed to him that may or may not have happened.
It is no secret that I have read 'The Da Vinci Code' several times. I genuinely believe that 'The Da Vinci Code' and 'Angels And Demons' are, by far, Brown's best works.
The only genre of movie that I could see making that doesn't have anything magical or otherworldly about it would be a war film. I'm very interested in history, and a war film could be something that would lure me in.
Tom Hanks, who starred in 'The Da Vinci Code,' turns out to be related to a number of the historic characters that feature in 'The Da Vinci Code,' including William the Conqueror and Shakespeare.
I think it's important to recognise that 'The Da Vinci Code' opened up a vast new audience for a general readership interested in historical detective stories and research into history.
I used to throw on soundtracks, and orchestral stuff would be the only thing I could write to, maybe 'Dead Can Dance' or 'Cocteau Twins' or something. Mostly, it was movies scores that would kind of inspire me.
It's a big thing to call yourself a poet. All I can say is that I have always written poems. I don't think I'm interested in any discussion about whether I'm a good poet, a bad poet or a great poet. But I am sure, I want to write great poems. I think every poet should want that.