I don't know that you can do an absurdist film and just have everybody embrace it in terms of filling out cards. I just don't think it happens. So you have to prepare an audience.

When I began to think about the head of the family, the storyteller, the rise of television which became the new storyteller, the break-up of the American family as an idea and then Avalon came.

A lot of time mistakes are very interesting - you look for the behaviour that's not the one you expect.

It's such a funny thing. Hollywood is terrible unless you happen to be a celebrity who's a Republican. So Ronald Reagan can be a Hollywood celebrity, and he's a Republican, and then he can become the president, and that's okay. Fred Thomson, well, that's okay. But the rest we need to demonize. There's no consistency.

I think test screening works at its best when the audience knows what it's getting.

First of all, just to get Diner made would have been an achievement in that I got a chance to direct.

It's always hard to explain why an audience ultimately responds to a movie.