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.

And the inner dynamics of Hollywood are like politics. Say you give a script to a group of executives - they all sit around, afraid to voice an opinion, saying nothing, waiting to know what the consensus is. Just like focus groups, opinion polls or a cabinet.

The studios have been taken over by marketing people and accountants.

I worry that we are approaching a time when that which is shocking is squeezed out by the Stalinism of political correctness.

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.

There are some young women movie stars who are doing it everywhere, smoking in every movie, sometimes even with placements with a pack of cigarettes.

I was a militant smoker, and in my case, I think I particularly used smoking because what I felt was a kind of politically correct big brother assault on smoking.