I wanted to do - there was this film called 'Magic' that Anthony Hopkins did. And the director wanted me. The writer wanted me. Joe Levine said no, I don't want any comedians in this.

Zero Mostel wasn't afraid of authority in any form, and that's the part that influenced me the most.

On screen, Gene Wilder could often be summed up as an accident waiting to happen, that frizzy, flyaway hair, the eyes darting this way and that and then something would set him off, Zero Mostel, say, in the movie that made Wilder a star, "The Producers."

My favorite author is Anton Chekhov, not so much for the plays but for his short stories, and I think he was really my tutor.

What did you expect? 'Welcome, sonny?' 'Make yourself at home?' 'Marry my daughter?' You've got to remember that these are just simple farmers. These are people of the land. The common clay of the new West. You know . . . morons.

So shines a good deed... in a weary world.

Because we had to convince the scientific members of Transylvania that with the procedure I was using on the creature, Dr. Frankenstein could be taught to be a civilized human being, what I called a man about town. Instead of a monster who's going to kill their children, it was someone who could sing and dance.