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.

I was six when we came to this country. When I was 14 or so, I still had a lot of trouble with it.

I have only one loyalty - to my writing. I never wanted to be the head of a studio or a producer.

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.

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.

I think one of the things that I was struck by was that Joe has the financial wherewithal to go check into some expensive clinic, go into rehab and beat these addictions but he didn't. He sort of designed his own, you know, sort of rehabilitation at home. And anybody could do what he did. When he felt like having a cigarette after he ate, he would get up and walk. At cocktail hour when he used to have a drink and watch the news, he stopped watching the news. He couldn't. He couldn't watch the news and not have a drink and a cigarette. He would walk.

A cigarette in the hands of a Hollywood star onscreen is a gun aimed at a 12- or 14-year-old.