Well, you always discover a lot in the editing room. Particularly the action, because you have to over-shoot a lot and shoot an enormous amount of material because many of the sequences have to be discovered in the editing and manipulation of it.

If I could steal someone's dream myself, I'd have to go for one of Orson Welles.

What I react against in other people's work, as a filmgoer, is when I see something in a movie that I feel is supposed to make me feel emotional, but I don't believe the filmmaker shares that emotion. They just think the audience will. And I think you can feel that separation. So any time I find myself writing something that I don't really respond to, but I'm telling myself, 'Oh yes, but the audience is going to like this,' then I know I'm on the wrong track and I just throw it out.

People want to see something that shows them you can do what you say. That's the trick.

I made 'Batman' the way I made every other film, and I've done it to my own satisfaction - because the film, truly, is exactly the way I wanted it to be.

What I try to do is write from the inside out. I really try to jump into the world of the film and the characters, try to imagine myself in that world rather than imagining it as a film I'm watching onscreen. Sometimes, that means I'm discovering things the way the audience will, with character and story.

The term 'genre' eventually becomes pejorative because you're referring to something that's so codified and ritualised that it ceases to have the power and meaning it had when it first started.