I had written four scripts before I wrote Recount. Each one progressed my career a little bit, but I didn't make a dime off any of them. Recount was the first thing I sold, and I actually sold it as a pitch to HBO. They bought it as a pitch, which was a miracle. I thought, "Wow, this could be the last time I'll be paid to write a script again, which would be too bad because that was an amazing experience I just had."

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.

I've found that sitting around and obsessing about projects moving forward, when there's actually nothing I can do about it, at a certain point, is really counter-productive.

I don't even know if people are familiar with my name as an actor. It's not as if I ever was an über-famous actor.

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

Even from a really young age I was a huge movie buff - five, six, seven, eight. Just loved movies, but in a more in-depth way than most kids that loved movies at that time. I'd find a filmmaker or something and want to see all his movies.

I read an interview with Aaron Sorkin and he said he plays every part when he's writing. I thought, "Oh, I do that too! I'm doing okay."