I can't speak to how Michael [Douglas] approached it in terms of his process.

That love of movies is very much alive in me.

I had always wanted to tell a story that was set in Los Angeles in the '50s, because that's where I grew up, and it was the city of my childhood memories.

I had a checkered early career, for sure, with a lot of very unhappy experiences where pictures got taken away, re-cut, re-titled... all the nightmares one hears about.

I thought, "If I could bring these characters [Wonder Boys] to life and lead the audience to react the same way I did, this could be a really special picture." Then I read Michael's [Chabon] novel and got even more enthusiastic about it.

I approach the movies I make as a movie-lover as much as a movie-maker.

Initially, it connected with me when I was a kid, seeing a lot of movies while growing up in Los Angeles. And Sam's [Fuller] pictures are an expression of such a distinct voice that he was one of those filmmakers who made me aware that there was, in fact, a real presence behind the camera that was telling the story, as opposed to actors just presenting it.