Assumptions allow the best in life to pass you by.

I never actually do rehearsals. That's one of the reasons that I write those bios and if I can meet with the actors I'll meet them or talk to them on the phone. What I want is for them to come on set knowing their lines and knowing who the character is.

As a screenwriter I'm often writing in genres where there have been thousands of movies; whereas when I direct movies they tend to be in between genres. They tend to have a little bit of a genre to them, but they're really about the people, and they're people we haven't met before.

The media in America has become so cowed and compromised.

If you write a movie for Roger Corman, it's going to get made. You saw it almost the next day.

In a movie you have all these logistical problems; all these practical problems. But you're also going to have people come who can do things that you can't do, and you get to direct their talents.

The hardest thing about movie acting is that if you're playing a character who changes within the movie, you've got to do that, but you've got to do it out of sequence, because we never have gotten to shoot in sequence, and that's really, really tough.