It seems to be the sense that once you throw guys in prison they're not going to come out. No, they're going to come out and, you know, what kind of beast have you created from that process?

I think that Anderson Cooper does a great job of staying with stories and pushing them. New Orleans he really... He was there and he pushed it past the point where his producers were saying, "Listen, you've got to stop because people are tuning out now. You know, we're on to another disaster." You know, what do you worry about, Haiti, Chile, Turkey? What? You know where do you put your attention and your focus? So for one person to really be able to cover all that ground would be tough.

Whatever the reasons, 2008 it felt as though the combination of distribution models starting to tighten and the publishing and film and music industries having to revolutionize themselves to catch up, and understand how this is going to work in the new millennium has made it a lot easier to pursue multi-platform careers. It's much easier to hire one person who can do three or four different things than one specialist in that field.

I would say the only one person I know of who kind of combines the elements that my father brought to the table in terms of affecting the public discourse would be Oliver Stone. His combination of academic brilliance and real life experience and just understanding people I think is what makes him such a great storyteller, but also he cares. He is interested. He meets somebody and he listens to them. He has some questions. He wants to know what they're about. And as a result I think his worldview is much more complex and whole and most of the other.

It's a certain kind of human compact that obviously you lose as soon as there is a screen and a camera there, so I think we'll always have theater. I think theater will always be a powerful force because we need that human touch, particularly as we spend more and more time with machines, cell phones, computers we start to lose our humanity.

A company that was I think the one I learned the most from in Wall Street 2, just in terms of my own character in and the kind of firm he worked in, was John Thomas Financial. There it's like warriors in an arena getting ready for battle. Thomas Belesis just fires these guys up like there is no tomorrow, and I absolutely got addicted to that optimism and adrenaline and that "We're going to do it, we're going to do it, buddy" kind of attitude that he had.

I was about 20 when my mom got sick with cancer and it was bad. It was very scary and at the time I was doing my first screenplay and I was on deadline and was alone with my father in Massachusetts. I said, "Pop, you know, I don't how I'm going to work. I don't know how I can get this done. You know, I got to hand this script in and I can't think about anything but Mom." He said, "Well, you know, now is the time when you're going to learn what it means to compartmentalize." And those words really had an impact on me.