I'd been basically anchored in New York for three years, but I fled to L.A. after the funeral and decided that I had to start a movie immediately. It was the only way to avoid becoming overwhelmed by depression. And that meant financing the film myself because there is no such thing as "immediately" in movies that one writes.

Some people get married and they remain "I," some get married and become "we."

Death is a part of life, and eventually I assimilated that completely.

Boxing is not coming back. There's not going to be a new Ali or a new Tyson. What's happened to movies is happening to boxing-that is, too much availability of alternative, similar entertainment. Movies started to become diluted with the advent of television; that has been mirrored by the dilution of boxing, with kickboxing and absolute, extreme homicidal fighting.

When people are temperate in their behavior, in their lives, someone who is addictive or extreme or obsessive can't understand how people can just go through their lives in the middle, and people who are rational and balanced can't understand the opposite. I'm one who's in the extreme camp in almost every area of my life and I always have been. I've observed that I'm in a minority, but I never understand people who are measured.

Much as I like getting awards in Oldenburg, Germany and Torino, it's nice to get one in America.

It's hard to give a dramatic shape to even the most dramatic life. . . . you are forced not just into selectivity, but into alteration, distortion and outright lying about what did and didn't happen.