Those artists who say that somehow therapy or analysis will thwart their creativity are completely misinformed. It's absolutely the opposite: it opens closed doors.

When you have people who are embarrassing themselves for a living, who are making themselves look foolish and vulnerable and emotional for a living, your day-to-day reality is going to be a high-wire act. People are going to get in fights. People are going to get upset. People are going to walk off set. People are going to call each other names. It happens on every film that has any emotional people.

Now I see it clearly. My whole life has pointed in one direction. I see that now. There never has been any choice for me.

I could be just a writer very easily. I am not a writer. I am a screenwriter, which is half a filmmaker... But it is not an art form, because screenplays are not works of art. They are invitations to others to collaborate on a work of art.

One of the things that I do like about filmmaking is that you find out how to solve new problems.

Don't ever let the viewer settle in and get ahead of you.

Film noir is not a genre. It is not defined, as are the western and gangster genres, by conventions of setting and conflict, but rather by the more subtle qualities of tone and mood. It is a film 'noir', as opposed to the possible variants of film gray or film off-white.