I'm not really interested in the exploding car or endless sort of dystopian fantasies and superheroes. None of that... that doesn't interest me very much.

I'm not really interested in the exploding car or endless sort of dystopian fantasies and superheroes. None of that... that doesn't interest me very much.

The truth is that I used to read J.J. bedtime stories. He came up to me at the FOX commissary about four years ago and he said, "Do you remember what you gave me for my Barmitzvah?" I said no. He said, "You gave me the annotated Sherlock Holmes and my son is reading it now." It was the gift that kept on giving.

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

What’s the difference between and actor and a movie star. An actor is someone who pretends to be somebody else. A movie star is somebody who pretends that somebody else is them.

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.

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