Fun is what you do for yourself. If somebody else does it, it's entertainment.

We must have a pie. Stress cannot exist in the presence of a pie.

Consider: for all the gobbledegook [film studio] executives spout about backstory, all that we, the audience, want to know is what happens next. That's the only thing that's going on. . . . Character is nothing other than action, and character-driven means The plot stinks, and you'd better hope the star is popular enough to open the movie in spite of it.

I look back on my liberal political beliefs with a sort of wonder - as another exercise in self-involvement - rewarding myself for some superiority I could not logically describe.

If you find that a point cannot be made without narration, it is virtually certain that the point is unimportant to the story (which is to say, to the audience).

Culture exists and evolves to relegate to habit categories of interactions the constant conscious reference to which would make human interaction impossible.

A good film script should be able to do completely without dialogue.