Actors will change their face, will change their hair, will change their voice, will disappear into the role. A movie star doesn't disappear.

There are movies I've made that I think no celebrations are in order.

Roddenberry had his own utopian vision about he perfectibility of man, and I never really believed that. And I don’t think the show demonstrates that. I think it is about gunboat diplomacy. In the final analysis, the Enterprise fires. They’re always shooting and bringing civilization, and coming to worlds where they don’t approve of tyrannical enterprises – no pun intended – and they substitute their own quote unquote enlightened version of how society is supposed to work, which is essentially American.

I was always a filmmaker before I was anything else. If I was always anything, I was a storyteller, and it never really made much of a difference to me what medium I worked in.

There are moments in one's life where you look back and you say, 'Well, I wish I had done this differently.

Once you decide that you're going to have the death of Spock, then how does that affect the other people? Why is it there? I got a lot of stick from a lot of people from the very beginning about the idea of killing Spock. Somebody said, "You can't kill him." And I said, "Sure you can; the only question is whether you do it well."

No rock and roll ensemble, however inspired, can deliver the kind of musical variety obtainable with the resources of 110 instruments.