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

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

My father's book is about is about a number of things, but about Houdini's rage to not be a failure like his father, and it's also about converting X-rated material, namely bondage, into family friendly safe fare, which is what he did. It's also about death and resurrection, and rising to live again another day when everyone thinks you're dead.

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.

When you read a history or biography you are entitled to imagine that it is as accurate as the authors can make it. That research has gone into it and we say "This is a history of the civil war, this is a biography of Lincoln" whatever. But you don't make any such supposition when you say "This is a historical novel."

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.

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