The worst thing for people to say about your movies is, "Yeah, it was pretty good, but it was too damn long.".

I want studios to be financing director-driven, auteurist cinema, as they did in the '70s. I think it's starting to happen now. Plus, because of how our world has changed politically, I think audiences are demanding more realism. We need to have more stuff in our culture about what is really going on right now.

I want all of my films to belong to me.

I spend a long time casting, but once I've cast a film there's a reason why I selected those people. So I'm hands-on in selecting the cast, hands-off to see what they do with their characters, and hands-on again to offer suggestions.

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

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

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