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.

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

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.

I'm from the Midwest, and I loved my family. I had a very good time as a child, but I was also - I have a theory about Jews growing up in the Midwest, that there is an ultimately sort of wonderful avoidance of a lot of things, and a great acceptance of whatever is happening.

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

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.

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.