The only Sundance [2011] film about cults that could actually have life as a cult film, THE WOODS has the greatest comic insight into why our current culture might inspire a search for meaning in the first place.

As a performer, I could be like, "I don't want to leave that in there." But as a producer, I have to leave it in there.

The stuff that I've been doing lately is political. It's not always about people who are super famous movie stars. The fact that people are still taking a chance and listening to the blacklist episodes is really exciting.

I have a degree in cinema studies and the big paper I wrote at the end of that was about Judy Garland and Liza Minnelli. So I thought that I knew quite a bit about Judy Garland, but I read in passing that the Stonewall riots were a reaction to her death and I had never really read enough to know what that meant or how that could be true. I was interested in that I knew so much about Judy Garland, but I really didn't know this story.

Between the action sequences, the pleasure lies in observing impeccably dressed Brits exchanging barbed witticisms - making it, basically, Downton Abbey with cyber crime and shower sex.

There's a fantastic, thousand-page book by David Thomson about [David O. Selznick]. Again, it's not the best argument or the best advertisement for his story, because most people aren't going to read a thousand-page book. But I feel like the rise and fall and the work [Mayer] produced - not just the movies, but the memos, the volume of writing - he's just so passionate, and that's really exciting.

I really feel like I could do anything if given enough time.