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.

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.

I'm from Chicago, my family started a chain of movie theaters in Chicago that were around for 70 years and then one of them became the head of Paramount and the other was the head of production at MGM and we all came out of Chicago.

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.

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 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.

I think some of the special effects in Close Encounters hold up better than the new more expensive special effects is because they were better actually.