So the Lincoln movie gets trashed because Connecticut voted for the amendment - not to mention how the people in Connecticut feel - but there's a lot of that. And I think it precedes from a fundamental misunderstanding of cinema. They are entertainment. And I'd like to say that entertainment isn't a synonym for disposable or mindless or stupid. Hamlet? Pretty entertaining from where I come from.

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

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

With a historical novel you know that liberties are being taken. Since Walter Scott, we know that poetic license, dramatic license, that events been conflated and that liberties have been taken, characters ditto, dates rearranged. But people don't seem to understand that movies are fictions, they are dramatizations, at least historical movies, and we should accord the moviemakers some of the same understanding and latitude. When you go to a movie you know it's a dramatization and not history.

Art doesn't just happen by accident. It is about pulling out new tricks and trying new things.

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

I never gave my career much strategic thought. Maybe I should have.