I'll of course open the question of what are you doing next?

I've got two things coming out two documentaries and I'm now looking for a movie to do which is a big agenda in my life because I need to do another movie.

Could you talk about the documentaries?

One is a sequel. I did a thing called Married in America in 2001 about nine couples who had gotten married that summer and I just finished the 2nd film on them and how they're all doing. And the other one is a very ambitious documentary about one of the passions of my life which is football.  Not American football, soccer. I've always wanted to do a film about the game because I've always thought football can penetrate more cultures and more places than any religious or political ideal. I've always wanted to do a film sort of loosely set in Germany in the World Cup and about the impact of the game in different parts of the world.  I did the politics of South Africa and how football is closely intertwined there. Iranian women's rights, social empowerment in South America, slavery in Senegal, racism in Europe and America being a country a team without heroes without a country. No one knows or cares what happens to them.

Is Beckham changing that?

Oh, he will change for a bit like it did in the 70's with Pele came to New York and to the Cosmos as it then was. It will change it for a bit but I don't think the game will ever take deep root because the other major sports will muscle it out. It just doesn't have a television....it's not really a television sport you know. It doesn't lend itself to television like American sports do and I think that's crucial for a sport to succeed in America it has to be a television sport. That’s how most people get it and football isn't.

Are all the married couples still together?

No. No. That's for me to know and you to find out.

Talking about the feature film you're looking to do, do you have something you're looking at?

I've got 3 things in various stages of development. One is a football one, one is a Mexican boarder one and one is a kind of ecology one all in different stages of development. Whether any of them end up being what I do next I don't know. You never know. It's a hard struggle when you get... the sort of films I want to do to get them made is difficult. That market has been sort of evaporating. I like working very cheaply, too. At least 2 of these films will be very, very low budget but I think that's the way it has to be these days. This film is very unusual. It cost $28 million. To spend that amount of money on this kind of film is very unusual and it was only because Philip Anschutz wanted to make the film. This is his pet project.

You mentioned earlier that a lot of the smaller parts are played by pretty big names.  Could you talk about getting all those...?

It was surprisingly easy really once they knew the film was being made because it is a heroic period. I used to send the cast to the National Portrait gallery where they could see themselves you know all painted up. I've been trying to work with Finney. I first offered him a film in 1973 and I never succeeded and now I've got him. People went to enormous trouble to be in it.  Michael Gambon was in the middle of the nightmare of the ....what was it called?

Harry Potter?

No, no, the DiNero spy film.

Oh, The Good Shepard.

The Good Shepard which was just in complete chaos and he really he had his agent go through hoops to have him show up to do our little thing. It was not really difficult in the end, I thought it would be but my problem was that some of the people they wanted in it was kind of ludicrous. I already agreed to have celebrity casting but you have to be careful.  You can't have Robby Williams playing Thornton or something like that. You have to be careful. You'd have to turn down ideas they came up with....so and so is dying to do it, dying to be in it. And you say hang on a minute.

I was going to say if Robby Williams came in and said hey I want to do this would you turn him down?

Well I don't know. I can’t remember if I did or whether I just made that up but I certainly did have to pour cold water on some ideas. There had to be certain intelligence about who I had in it or the whole thing would go belly up fast.