Little Christian Bale. It was one of my favorite movies as a kid, and I re-watched it not too long ago, and my jaw just hit the floor. The whole time I was like, "Who wrote this? This is unbelievable." And then the credits came up at the end and it was Tom Stoppard, my favorite playwright. It's just an amazing piece of writing.

Everything I've written up to now, hasn't had anything to do with my life really.

People that work at the White House, they stay forever and love the job. Someone asked me, "Was there really a butler that was there for 40 years?" I said, "No, they're all there for 40 years."

The exciting thing about today with the Internet, streaming, and YouTube, is you can just go do it. You can go make a short and put it up, and it, very well, may be seen. You can create your own Internet series and just put it out there. It wasn't like that when I was in my 20s. People weren't doing this sort of thing - now they can and they should try it.

In movies that tackle these political issues, there are far more interesting themes to be explored than partisan politics, which is what we get on cable news every second of every day.

I don't see myself directing things I don't write because, to me, directing was just an extension of the writing process.

Certainly, for me, and it's gone this way on every project I've worked on, the "writing" never ends until you're done with the movie.