“Just as Miami remade itself to better resemble its image in Miami Vice, L.A. may rise eventually to Heat's desolate, sand­blasted impersonality.”

“The artiness of Coppola’s aesthetic ultimately becomes an ethic as Pacino, in somber profile, emerges more victim than villain, more a melancholy Dane than a bloody Macbeth.”

“No doubt I’ll always be interested in underworld sto­ries. But no cutesy films about mama’s pas­ta and people getting married. I can’t stand that.”

"Televisions blare from every room in the Chateau Marmont. Reagan's in surgery... Jim Brady's near death... Dan Rather's in tears. The coun­try's gone crazy. The world's about to col­lapse... And the Oscars have been postponed until tomorrow."

“Watching the filming, one wonders how many potential ‘taxi drivers’ stalk the city streets. Where does life begin and Central Casting end?”

“I like the idea of spurting blood. It's like a, God, it's really like a purification, you know, the fountains of blood. It's a personal thing”

Here‘s Arthur Bell‘s classic account of the making of a masterpiece