Look, I admit it. I was difficult. I love to be liked, but I’ll fight anybody who tries to stop me from doing what I want to do. I’m a bigmouth. A troublemaker. Temperamental. I only care about people who care about their work. Sure, Kramer and I are now enemies. But it was good for my self-respect to fight him every inch of the way. I lost, but he’ll think twice before hiring a young director again. It’s a question of manhood. When a director works for someone, he always feels as if he is bought. You say to yourself, ‘I’m the director and I’m in charge,’ but in most cases it just simply isn’t true. So when a producer, a star, an executive steps on your toes, it’s not so much that he is interfering with your artistic judgment, but that he is making you feel less of a man if you give in, let it go. So there are battles with studio heads and producers. The pleasure I get after a confrontation is to say to myself, ‘Listen, I’m a man. I stood up for it. I can be fired. I can win or lose, but at least I said what I had to say at the right time.’ I don’t really hate Kramer anymore, though. If I’d been open enough with myself, I would have known he and I never could have dealt on the same level. I discovered something about myself, something I should have found earlier: I could no longer compromise. I wasn’t about to make another film where we didn’t say something real. If I had to describe his style of filmmaking in two words, it would be safe controversy. It didn’t say anything about the people we were talking about.