I think Cool Hand Luke was probably the first movie in which I was aware of the writing as its own separate thing. It was that speech when the guy reads Paul Newman the riot act. The speech about going in the box.

I think writing is a difficult thing and you need to suffer a little bit, even if it's just to sit there and think what an idiot you are and how anyone else could do this better than you can.

I think Cool Hand Luke was probably the first movie in which I was aware of the writing as its own separate thing. It was that speech when the guy reads Paul Newman the riot act. The speech about going in the box.

In exchange for ten years of being on top, I'm gonna end up in prison or I'm gonna end up dead, and there's something fascinating about that.

As much as I love period movies and especially more swashbuckling movies, I think that sometimes they tend to be, umm... it's hard for the audience to relate to them.

It's okay to lie as long as you reach a higher truth doing it.

In my own experience, the scripts that I wrote, if they didn't go within two years and become a film, they never went and no one ever came looking for them.