I find that when people get a script, they know within five pages if the writer can write. Once you're five pages in, it doesn't matter whose name is on the cover, you're not even thinking about it.

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."

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.

I was alone a lot as a kid, because my parents were divorced.

I think there's a lot of shame in American race relations. There's a lot of suppressed guilt that lashes itself out still. I see that all the time, and whereas opposed to sort of trying to address the issue in an up-front way, they're attacking and thus perpetuating the problem thinking that they're being sophisticated and post-racial, when, in fact, they're being completely regressive.

I love the idea of a movie hero in a thriller who is able to get ahead by just his brilliance, and not with a gun or by being an action hero.

I started writing when I was 26, so I don't even know what year that was. I wrote a script for me to star in. A friend of mine, who was an actor that I would compete against a lot, had written a script and was taking all these meetings. He just kept pushing me and was like, "You got to do it. You're going to love it!" He's a very successful screenwriter now. His name is Michael Bacall and he wrote 21 Jump Street, Project X, and Scott Pilgrim vs. the World. So it was a few factors.