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

I'm mainly interested in people trying to figure s#!t out.

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

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

What I want any genre to do, what I want any work of art to do, is to illuminate the human condition.

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."