I got a chance to work with Mel Brooks on two of his films: Silent Movie and High Anxiety.

I never really wanted to be an actor. And that was the beginning of it, I began to write things down and eventually became a writer on a television show.

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.

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.

You don't always have to have the ending, but you want to have a satisfactory conclusion.

I think it's a promising time which will show a lot of diversification that we've seen in the past.

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