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 think certain movies work and that is part of the magic of it all. We can't truly define why something succeeds.

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

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.

I play around with human things, human relationships and that, and allow that kind of talk to work in that way, on that level.

I would give the cameras to the kids in the swimming pools and they would play with them, and then I would collect them and we would upload it. If you're in the process, you're there.

You have a movie and it proves itself and then certain things happen.