All I try to do is create an atmosphere that seems comfortable enough, that it removes tension and everyone feels free. If they feel free then behaviour happens, small moments happen and that's what ultimately works the best for me.

There was a time when I said, "I'm going to go do a television thing," after doing all these theatrical films, and heard, "Television? Why are you going to go back to television?" It's an interesting place.

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

No one really has the power, and everybody's trying to get through the day, and everybody's nervous and desperate.

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 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.

Rain Man certainly didn't test really well. If you look at it carefully, you have a disease autism they didn't understand back then, they didn't know in the test audience whether it's okay to laugh or not laugh, because it's a film that's done in a way where, "Well, maybe I'm not supposed to laugh." At the end of the film, Dustin Hoffman gets on the train and doesn't even acknowledge his brother. Not even a glance, nothing. That's why the studio said, "Can't you just have him look at Tom Cruise at the end of the film?"