Usually the characters are where I start. Then I continually ask myself, 'What's the worst thing that could happen to this character?'

We're trying to reinvent Bond. He's 28 - no Q, no gadgets.

I like taking genres and subverting them. I did that with In the Valley of Elah. I said, "Okay, this is just a murder mystery. Relax." And then, two thirds of the way through, I broke every convention of a murder mystery.

I like to really respect the audience and let them come through on answers.

I miss my mother very, very much.

I was fired from my own television show, CBS's Family Law. It was the second time this had happened in my career, the first being when I was fired from The Facts of Life. I had been grateful to work in TV for so long but had always been chasing a career as a feature writer-director and had completely failed.

United States could be a great country. It needs to be a great country. It's our responsibility as citizens to make that happen, every single one of us.