There is something about being a director where, for me personally, I get to . . . it's the closest I'll ever come to being able to be a stand up. And to use my particular sense of humor, and hear people laughing, without me having to stand up in front of an audience and tell jokes.

The weird thing is that I hate to fly, and the quote that I give people is that every time I get off a plane, I view it as a failed suicide attempt.

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.

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.

It always happens at the end that you're always under the gun because of various schedules and all that.

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.

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