“Here’s the thing about black and white. It’s why I was so sad to say goodbye to it. It’s not literal—it is a metaphor, automatically. And my orientation is that that’s the point: a movie is a metaphor. ‘What is the metaphor?’ you ask when you’re trying to solve the problem. If you’re in black and white, it’s partly solved, it is already saying, ‘No, this is not life, this is something about life.’”
Mike Nichols, interviewed by Jack O’Brien in Becoming Mike Nichols (HBO, February 22, 2016)