Movie studios, Hollywood studios, by and large are not making the kind of movies that I go to see.

If you look at the heroes of antiquity and myth, they all have flaws. It's something that they have to overcome; their flaws are something that they have to act in spite of. The challenge is not to defy your fate, but to endure it. That is heroic.

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.

The director is a bit analogous to the conductor of a symphony orchestra. It's a collaborative adventure.

Art and commerce are not irreconciliable, they are inextricably intertwined.

Sure you can; the only question is whether you do it well.

We were extremely prescient in that we predicted the Soviet coup before it happened. That was kind of amazing.