I got involved with an acting school and studied for a couple years. They used to have improv exercises that you would work on and you would do improvs.

Different reactions while film test screening doesn't mean even the audience thinks ambiguity is a bad thing. But if you're asking them right away to start checking things off, they don't know what to do. I think at their best, it applies to when the audience knows what it is. Then, when they say, "Oh, well, I thought it was too boring in blah-blah-blah part," then you better pay attention to it. It's like going for the hamburger. Better be the good hamburger I went for.

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.

I worked at a local television station and I got a chance to direct and do all those things - worked kiddie shows, Ranger House show with the hand puppets and things like that.

Ronald Reagan was this actor who was going to be president, and he was very charming. What he had was, he talked about America in ways that got people all caught up in it. He was creating this America - it could even be the mythical "America" - that we subscribe to.

Creative differences are legendary in this movie business, so we're really not exploring the creative-difference aspect as opposed to the money aspect, or the fact that something can come up in a movie and literally put the whole movie on the line, and this is where producers have to earn their keep.

I've had a lot of movies that didn't get great numbers on test screening, but a lot of times the film was able to survive, or the studio still stayed and supported it.