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.

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.]

From what I've been able to determine, many of our big stars are addicted to tobacco. They want to smoke in movies for the same reason I smoked as I wrote, which is that they think their performance is going to be better.

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 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.

Cigarettes, cigarettes were much tougher. Booze was tough And I had a real drinking problem before as we discovered in the hospital really, but the cigarettes are much tougher and to tell you the truth.

Don't smoke. Don't kill yourselves. Don't maim yourselves. Tell your friends. Please don't smoke.