My very first professional writing credit was on a movie called The Dunwich Horror, and Roger Corman was the executive producer.

When I'm casting a picture, I think who I'd like to see in it if I was sitting in a theater. Who would surprise me?

When I first went to Pittsburgh, I had never been there before, and we hadn't even decided to shoot there yet. I just went to see the location of Michael Chabon's novel. Once there, I became aware that Pittsburgh is a "wonder boy," in the narrow sense of the term, just as the human characters are.

My very first professional writing credit was on a movie called The Dunwich Horror, and Roger Corman was the executive producer.

It was just a wonderful experience, one for the memory book for sure. The sad thing about it was that the picture came under this absurd cloud of controversy. Here was a movie based on the central theme that racism is something that is taught, and it's illustrated by this story of a dog and the efforts of humans to re-train it after it had been trained to go after black people. And it created this ridiculous controversy and wound up being the last Hollywood movie that Sam [Fuller] made.

I'm still a great movie fan, and I guess that's the answer to your question.

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.