From a writing point of view, you now have teams of screenwriters working with a director. What's lost in the process is the power of that one heart, brain, gut and soul that makes something an original piece of writing.

Every time I flicked channels, there I was, talking. I was talking too much and writing too little. So Naomi and I went to Hawaii. The phone was cut off and we lost touch. This gave me the chance to have a good think about my life.

I think to put death on screen where it isn't that turns it into comic book time and there I think by desensitizing an audience, you really do open the possibility that someone is going to kill.

Meanwhile, politics is about getting a candidate in front of the public as a star, politics as rock'n'roll, politics as a movie.

From a writing point of view, you now have teams of screenwriters working with a director. What's lost in the process is the power of that one heart, brain, gut and soul that makes something an original piece of writing.

In the olden days, of course, cigarette companies would pay to have their product advertised in movies and to have actors smoke cigarettes.[Ronald Reagan used to do it.]

I think that Hollywood is sort of guilty of having a moral blind eye on this subject. While at the same time, you know, being involved in a lot of liberal causes and being involved very militantly, Hollywood is, in fact, guilty of helping to addict people to smoke.