I would never call myself cultural elite, but you might be cultural elite.

David O. Russell is probably my favorite filmmaker. He's not only a great director, but he's also a great writer.

Hollywood is for-profit, is what Hollywood is. All the studios are owned by big, megacorporations that are the furthest thing from liberal you can possibly imagine.

If you make action movies, the critics will savage you, and then your movies are outdated the following week with the new wave of special effects.

Blanket cynicism toward government has always existed.

The easiest time to be funny is during a fairly serious situation. That way you can break the ice.

When you screen it the first couple times, you're just trying to get the movie to work, trying to get the story to flow, trying to find out where your areas are where you have enough breath to laugh a little bit. So you're doing that the first two or three screenings, and then finally, you dial the movie in and it's working, and at that point, it's 50/50 as far as what's funny and what's working. Sometimes you'll put something in and it will just die so hard that it'll almost kill the movie.