I very much had wanted to do a picture with more humor than what I had been allowed to do earlier, which is what attracted me to Wonder Boys so much. I found it funny in a very serious way, which is the best kind of comedy.

What you care about [movie] is whether it's moving you, or whether you're caught up in it.

There was a long period of time when Sam Fuller had a lot of projects fall through and had a lot of difficulties getting a project off the ground. And I was able to observe him during that period, and see his incredible resiliency and courage as he faced this difficulty and just kept working.

Rob Lowe, who I thought was really good in the movie [ Bad Influence], had his performance overshadowed by this sort of tabloid approach to him and the movie.

I don't think of the marketplace as teen-oriented or teen-dominated. I think of it as dominated by high-concept, in marketing especially.

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

On the surface, Wonder Boys seemed like such a departure from L.A. Confidential - it's funny, it's contemporary, and so on - and yet at a certain point, I had a feeling that reminded me how I felt when I was shooting L.A. Confidential. I analyzed it for a while, and thought about how emotionally involved I was with the characters. Then I realized that in both movies, there are three main male characters and one female, and all of them are struggling to figure out what they're doing with their lives, independent of each other.