My family was loving... they were very supportive and very affectionate, and basically I could do what I wanted, and basically it wasn't anything dangerous, thank God.

People so far have been very fond of the Robert Altman movie, as I am, and when one things goes well it shines light on your other projects and now I seem to have a number of projects that are moving forward.

If anyone would have been paying serious attention to my puppet shows, I would have been sent to therapy very young.

God, I'd love to do a big commercial movie that made a lot of money and whose plot was interesting too.

My dad was born in Chicago in 1908... his parents came from Russia. They settled in Chicago, where they lived in a little tiny grocery store with eight or nine children - in the backroom all together - and my grandmother got the idea to go into the movie business.

I've directed a fair amount of television series - so I'm always trying to learn new things. One episode was all hand-held and I'm trying to get better at when you should do things and when you should just shut up and watch what the people are saying.

I mean, the whole idea of movies was it was special to go to see; you went to a movie theater to see something that was magical and amazing, in a very special location.