We don't shoot in L.A. much anymore. You know, TV and movies, most everything's shot other places.

If you look at a character as a mountain over there that you have to climb, then I think you've lost 50 percent of the air.

I'm really influenced by Southern novelists, not many movie people. More like John Faulkner, William Faulkner, Erskine Caldwell, Flannery O'Connor, John Steinbeck, and people like that.

Nowadays the movies that people are going to see in the theaters are the big-event movies, like Spider-Man or something, or they're 25-year-old models who are vampires, or they're very broad comedies, or they're standard action movies. So if you're going to work for a studio and do a movie for the budget that the movie needs, those are the kinds of movies you'll be in.

I’m not much of a drinker, so I’m going to eat seven pounds of pork.

I think my stuff's kind of obsolete now, you know? I'm making Model Ts or something, and everybody else is making spaceships.

After you've done 60-something movies, you're always looking for something different.