It felt scary because there was no auditioning, no rehearsing.

When I move from being a cameraman to being a director I looked at a lot of other cameramen who tried to make the move. And in each case they moved up their camera operator to be the DP, which really meant they didn't want to give up being the DP, and really wanted to do both. And my feeling was if I was going to succeed as a director, I had to just be a director and give up the safety net of being a cameraman.

Growing up, my fascination was all things dinosaur, and as an adult, I've had some success making films about aliens, so this is a dream come true.

I was seeing a lot of really good things about Get Shorty when it came out, and my wife pointed out that if you validate the good reviews, you also have to validate the bad reviews.

I'm not the one or two take guy, but I'm not the 20, 30, 50, 70 take guy either. If I do a bunch of takes, like more than five or six, it's usually for some technical reasons.

Michael Jackson wanted to be in Men in Black II. He told me he had seen the first Men in Black in Paris and had stayed behind and sat there and wept. I had to explain to him that it was a comedy.

I haven't read a review of one of my films for the best part of 10 years.