And I think being a good director is being able to be completely tyrannical and you?ve got to be an absolute dictator while at the same time, you have to listen and see everything because it can all change on a dime.

I was very much in my room with my marionette stage, you know, creating these incredibly boring things that I felt were so fascinating, and forcing my relatives to come, and charging money for them to see my little productions.

I produced and directed a movie a couple years ago that won some awards that Samuel Goldwyn released called 'The Last Good Time'. I wrote, produced and directed it, but I wasn't in it.

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 have a 92 year old father whose doing beautifully who lives in Chicago and a sister and a nephew and a niece and I love coming back and try to do so fairly often.

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.

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.