This is a movie version of the play [All the Way]and when Bryan [Cranston] was on stage the bigness of the man was played to the back of the house. When we turned the cameras on that, it changed a bit with close-ups, but we got just as much power in that beautiful intimacy.

When we had ideas that earned there way in [Austin Powers], it began to get okay. The hook for me was 'Mini-Me.' We only auditioned one guy - Verne Troyer - and at the time I said, 'we have to get this guy, get him life insurance, whatever he needs' because there was no other way or actor to do it. It was amazing to me just to talk to him...he was Mini-Me.

Even modern wars are fought like revenge tales from some petty grievance.

I'm not one of these directors, so far, that wants to have a whole separate director's cut of these things. So far they've turned out to be kind of the length that they wanted to be.

[ Dalton Trumbo] always said he fought so many fights, all seemingly different, but all about the concepts of fairness and justice.

But I always reassure them that as far as my contractual rights can go, I will protect them and make sure that they have approval over every bit of it so that they know I won't show something that's embarrassing.

John Wayne was never shy about that fervor, but because he was never overly zealous about his politics, and of course his status as a movie, he was embraced by both the right and the left.