A script is not a piece of literature, it's a process.

My grandfather lived to be 96 years old. He was born in a town outside of Salerno in Southern Italy. He came to New York when he was 20. He lived in the States from age 20 to 96, but he brought his culture with him, he brought his food with him, he brought his language with him, he never spoke a word of English.

It's funny, the hardest thing to do is to make something look like it's fast, loose and improvised, and get somebody to laugh.

Mulberry Street was the beating heart of the Italian-American experience, but you don't find those gangsters now. I live with a bunch of yuppies and models.

Even if you're a poet sitting in your room writing a poem, you're still in the world - although I guess being a poet is a different than having to deal with 40 or 50 people to raise a couple million bucks and all that bullshit.

It's always a problem when you're working with people you don't really know. Most filmmaking is about shaking hands and just starting. You know, these month - or two-month-long endeavors that millions of dollars are based on, and the people doing them don't even know each other, or know each other under pressure, or know each other when things are really... Which filmmaking is completely done under in many circumstances. You're under constant crisis, making a movie.

I was born in the Bronx, and then my father moved us to the country at an early age.