My editor and I remain very disciplined. It's just sometimes when you're making a film, you get into the cutting room and you see a scene that's slowing you down in a certain section, but if you remove that scene then, emotionally or story-wise, another scene a half-hour later won't have the same impact. You just get stuck with it.

I think that Peter Jennings is the only decent one of the big three.

I'm attracted to short screenplays. Nobody really wants a film to be over two hours, or at least I don't.

I'm considered to some degree a successful director working in Hollywood, making films my way but using studio financing. But with almost every single one, I get praised up the wazoo by people who never would have financed the films. It's: "Gee, this movie is so new and different - what do you want to do next?" "This." "Oh, that's too new and different."

There is an audience out there for literate films - slower, more observant, more human films, and they deserve to be made.

A book suggests a whole world and story that I could have never thought of in a million years.

If you have your movies so that everyone understands everything, I think that's probably not a very good movie.