First of all, Sam Fuller left a group of extraordinary movies that are unique, that are "Fuller-esque," as one might say, which makes them stand apart from any other director's films.

I didn't look at it as a transition so much, because I never intended to have a career as a journalist, writing about people who make movies.

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.

In terms of talking with my collaborators as they came onboard - Jeannine Oppewall, our production designer, Dante Spinotti, our cinematographer, and so forth - I said to them, "Let's pretend that this is a place like Honolulu. Let's ignore the fact that all these other movies have been made here for decades and try to come at it with a fresh eye, as if it were an exotic city that people aren't that familiar with. And let's present our own view of it, create a world that's unique to this movie [L.A Confidential].

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.

What I try to do is give each actor an environment in which they can do their best work.