You can shoot a film in New York without seeing the Empire State Building. Or Starbucks...although the latter is much less realistic.

I was nearly a teen-ager before I stopped assuming that everyone I met was Jewish.

I'm always struck when I go somewhere I've never been before, especially if it's in my home town, by just how different the atmosphere can be, and how disorienting it can be - especially if there's any kind of trouble.

I would love to take control of the entire universe and for five years you give every movie the same widespread distribution no matter what movie and see if there's a real discrepancy between people coming to see science-fiction films or superhero films. I seriously bet there would be no discernible difference.

Teenagers all think their life is a movie. If you break up with someone or you have a fight, you walk around with movie scores playing in your head. You sort of see yourself suffering as you're suffering. There's a lot of melodrama attached to the real events of your life.

I wrote a play once called 'Lobby Hero,' which I thought turned out very well, but there's no final version of it. I published the one we produced, but there are seven other versions with different variations sitting in my desk at home.

I still haven't quite caught on to the idea of writing without dialogue. I like writing dialogue, and there's nothing wrong with dialogue in movies.