When you're studying drama, when you're a young actor, there are simple rules about acting. "Why am I here? What prevents me from leaving? What am I trying to get? How do I hide something?" So when you're making a film like Abel's movie, you want to be thinking about those things all the time. And you wanna be armed with those things, and you hope the other actors you're working with have the same understanding of drama and scene and acting. Sometimes it works and sometimes it doesn't.

Think of Frank Capra and Preston Sturges. They used the same actors over and over again.

Imagine if somebody were to really sit down with Osama bin Ladin and say, 'Listen man, what is it that you're so angry at me about that you're willing to have people strap bombs to themselves, or get inside of airplanes and fly them into buildings?' That would be the miracle if we can get, sit down and talk to our enemies and find a way for them to hear us.

So the thing that's beautiful about the Rolleiflex is that I open the camera up from the top and put my face in and that the camera's all about composition and all about light.

It was the baseball fantasy of a lifetime - to be able to sit on the bench with all those professional athletes. I got to take my son along because I wasn't sure I would be able to play with them.

Life really is very brief.

My father taught me to paint when I was young with watercolors and so I learned at a very young age the essential elements of the value of light and composition.