I had written the script a few years earlier for Paramount, then later got hired with Sam [Fuller] to write an entirely new script that he was going to direct. And that was one of the great thrills of my professional life.

A day doesn't go by when I don't get a compliment on L.A. Confidential, for example.

Pittsburgh has this rich industrial past, when it was the heart of the U.S. steel industry, and it burned out as the industry burned out and moved elsewhere.

You can imagine what it was like for me to actually be sitting in a room with matching typewriters, working under the tutelage of this guy I so admired, both as a filmmaker and as a man.

On a personal note, a legacy he left me, aside from being a friend who was important to me on many levels, was that the decades I knew Sam [Fuller] happened to be the decades that were his least happy professionally.

I stopped doing that [photojournalism] and wrote some screenplays on speculation, because even though I wanted to direct, to direct you need a lot of money. Even for a cheap movie, you need film stock and equipment and actors.

Most scripts are so linear and simplistic in their plotline.