I understand politicos gotta make bank. But cloistering with the Hollywood elite is not how you prove you're a man of the people.

Whatever you do, whether you're doing a television drama or a romantic comedy, you want to be relevant, to some degree.

Even I haven't downed enough L.A. Kool-Aid to believe that somehow Hollywood movies are an overt instrument of morality.

Gay marriage will be universally accepted in time. But if I may be so bold as to say to gays and lesbians, don't wait for that time to arrive. Just as my father and his generation did not 'wait' for their civil rights, nor should you. The toothpaste ain't going back in the tube. The tide has turned.

I've written films that are violent. I'm not big on sitting and watching violence.

When I was young and I look at the things that I wrote - I don't think that was the word they used back then, but they had a hipster sensibility. They were a little irreverent.

Quite simply, quite plainly, just by virtue of his being, Barack Obama is America. The first true American to lead our nation.