You have more and more people coming into the tent with the creative guys [on Hollywood films]. You have marketing and concept testers, advertising people. What you find gets the high numbers is easily appealing subjects: a baby, a big broad joke, a high concept. Everything is tested. The effect is to lessen the gamble, but in fact you destroy a writer's confidence and creativity once so many people are invited into the tent.

I always believe you can't kill good movies, because somebody's in some room and will die unless it gets made.

Media reporting denied privacy to anybody doing what I do for a living. It was no longer possible to work on your picture in privacy.

I took some time out for life.

I had a marketing idea that everybody hated, decency is sexy.

[Screenwriting] is no more complicated than old French torture chambers, I think. It's about as simple as that.

You become so obsessed, and that's not a bad thing for a movie. Serve it with that sense that it's the whole world.