When I was a screenwriter, I was doing it for mercenary reasons.

To say that you can't see echoes of the past in what I do would be absurd. Everything that has preceded me has affected me.

I don't want to walk in the middle. I want people to read what I write and feel strongly about it. If, at some point, whatever I am doing is failing to elicit a response, whether it's very positive or very negative, then I am going to stop doing it.

She feels and she cries. It is to be admired.

The past doesn't matter. People cling to it because it allows them to ignore the present.

That's what ever great writer, I believe, has done over the course of time - is they've figured out new ways of telling the same stories.

The Los Angeles Air Pollution Control Board is established in 1946 in an effort to discover the cause of the brown cloud hanging over the city and decide how to combat and disperse it. In 1949, after intense lobbying from both the automobile and oil industries, and against the recommendations and position of the Los Angeles Air Pollution Control Board, the public rail system, which at one time was the largest in the world, and still serves a majority of the city's population, is decommissioned and torn out. It is replaced by a small fleet of buses.