The happy medium is television. And if you find a good suitor, you can do it for years. With movies, you roll the dice. If people don't show that weekend, you're doomed. TV allows you to percolate a little bit, and it gives you a chance for people to find it.

If you have script problems and you don't fix them by the time you shoot, your script problems are now 40 feet tall.

You can't show up on set and expect it all to come together. You have to have a plan, much like how the director can't just show up and go, well, where should I put the camera? That is gonna determine how it is lit, you should have already been in the room looking at it earlier, pre-lit the room, you know there is a lot of prep that goes into it, so it is the same thing with acting. You can't just show up.

If you don't have any money and you want to make a horror movie, take a six-inch wide brush for house painting and dip that in a bucket of blood, and then just flick your wrist. You'll get this great speckled splash of blood, and it will cost you nothing.

Good, bad, I'm the guy with the gun

Studios might cast an actor because he is too tall next to the leading lady, who is too short, or they might not cast your guy because he's blond, and they wanted a brunette. There's all kinds of reasons why they want one person over another. I don't worry about it, but it can hurt sometimes if you really wanted something, if you really went after something.

Any time a writer thinks he has all the answers to how someone should talk or react or end a scene, it's a spontaneity-killer.