When you do a studio picture, all the paperwork and legal stuff is already taken care of!

While you're making the film and working with the actors, if you want to have a little room to breathe and experiment and play, it grows, and you want that to happen. It's not enough to just shoot the script. You've gotta come up with new inspiration, as you shoot it. There's gotta be room for that and time for that, so it grows.

Strangely, I always have a lot of cut scenes. I keep writing shorter and shorter scripts, thinking that this time, I'll get all my scenes in.

I guess you don't make any franchise movies unless the fans are there.

There are trappings of science fiction which I kind of embrace, but there are also cliches which I run from.

I don't want to have so much humor [in films] that it undermines the jeopardy, but enough to sometime relieve tension.

Damn, my first cut that I showed to distributors was probably about two hours and 20 minutes, even though my contract said two hours. So, I had to lose 20 minutes. It's incredible that it just keeps happening.