Your only competitors are your past achievements.

The literature now is so opaque to the average person that you couldn't take a science-fiction short story that's published now and turn it into a movie. There'd be way too much ground work you'd have to lay. It's OK to have detail and density, but if you rely on being a lifelong science-fiction fan to understand what the story is about, then it's not going to translate to a broader audience.

Pick up a camera. Shoot something. No matter how small, no matter how cheesy, no matter whether your friends and your sister star in it. Put your name on it as director. Now you're a director. Everything after that you're just negotiating your budget and your fee.

The quickest way to destroy ocean science is to take human explorers out of the water

Hope is not a strategy. Luck is not a factor. Fear is not an option.

I do an awful lot of scuba diving. I love to be on the ocean, under the ocean. I live next to the ocean.

I don't just want to be associated with a few good 3D movies and the audience is saying all of the other ones are crap.