The first assistant director is just so important that the choice of that person is critical to the movie.

Historically the director has been the key creative element in a film and we must maintain that. We must protect that, in spite of the fact that there is new technology that's continually trying to erode that.

The world is full of beautiful girls. But they're not Angelina Jolie. She's fun, honest, intelligent, gorgeous and divinely talented. She brings a hell of a lot to the party.

It's very eclectic, the way one chooses subjects in the movie business, especially in the commercial movie business. You need to develop material yourself or material is presented to you as an assignment to direct.

There are two things I will never do in my life. I will never climb Mount Everest, and I will never work with Val Kilmer again. There isn't enough money in the world.

I mean, this whole digital revolution is really eroding the director's importance on a movie because, number one, just from a practical standpoint, with floppy disks and the ability to put all of the film onto a disk, more people have access to the movie.

You have to be a great storyteller. And you have to master the tools that you have to tell the story which are, inorder of importance, the script, the actors and then thetechnical means.