Somebody comes to your house. You know they're coming, so it's not a surprise. And they give you an envelope that has your scenes in it. And they sit in the car outside for a half an hour while you read your scenes, then they ring your doorbell and you give your scenes back. Then you shoot the movie a few weeks later or something. The next time you see your scenes is the night before you start shooting. I never read the script [Blue Jasmine], so I didn't really know what it was about.

Let's say [Warren Beatty] wants you to speak louder in a scene. He won't stop playing the role and say to you as a director, "Will you speak louder on the next take?" He'll say it as Howard Hughes: "I can't totally hear you. Why don't you speak up a little bit?" To kind of keep this rhythm going.

[Woody Allen] does very few takes, and he doesn't give a whole ton of directions, although he does give direction.

For me, it was watching 'Reds' and 'Splendor in the Grass.' To me, 'Splendor' is like the companion piece to 'Rules Don't Apply.' It's set in the time when Warren [Beatty] came to Hollywood, and when he did that first film.

I got turned down for a million jobs until I got my first movie with Francis [Ford Coppola].

Howard Hughes innovation was in the aviation field. His designs and spirit of experimentation was at the forefront. As far as his work as film producer, he certainly went after a bigger and more ambitious kind of filmmaking, even if he wasn't necessarily a cinema artist.

Elia Kazan - the films he made were such a big deal for me when I was growing up.