I was never ambitious. I just wanted to have quiet, calm, listen to public radio and say, hello, how are you? Sit down, rest. But I had an early partner named Fred Freeman, a wonderful writer who I met at Northwestern. And I thought we were doing very well with "Jack Paar," and he said, no, we got to go to Hollywood. We got to write sitcom. It's the coming thing.

I'm a little older and I'm gonna do a bunch more movies and then they're gonna put me in a home for old directors.

I was very proud of that, of taking women and making them vulnerable and so I continued doing that. Right after Beaches I did "Pretty Woman", then I did "Frankie and Johnnie" and then I did "Other Sister" and "Princess Diaries" so that helped me get into the vein there of understanding women and trying to make them very pretty and very interesting.

I think I learned a lot on Beaches. A guy I worked with Dante Spinotti is a wonderful cinematographer and it was his first picture and he went on to be nominated for an Academy Award for "LA Confidential" which was great.

I grew up with two sisters, no brothers. There was Ronny who produced "Happy Days" for me and my sister Penny who acts, directs - she does everything. So they were very strong women in my life.

One of my thrills of the business is to find young people, there's a window. I like young people who are in that brief window between on their-way-up and rehab. In that window I can make stars. It's not really true but it's not so far off.

When I edit, I'm not from the school of Hello, I'm a genius, so everybody shut up. I'm from the school of Let's play it once in front of an audience, and then I'll tell you where it is going