I live in the Hollywood Hills. When I see a cop driving around there, I actually assume that he has my best interests at heart and that he has the best interests of my property at heart. I think if you'd go to Pasadena, they'd say the same thing. And I think if you knocked on doors in Glendale and asked them, they'd say the same thing.

Particularly as a writer, it is my job to ignore social critics, or the response that social critics might have when it comes to the opinions of my characters, the way they talk, or anything that can happen to them.

American Indians would, you know, scalp them and desecrate the bodies, you know, tie them to cactuses or bury them in anthills or things like that, and you know, cut up the bodies and stuff. And then the other enemy soldiers would come across and find their comrades laying there, ripped apart, and they would be sickened by it and it would scare them.

I have loved movies as the number one thing in my life so long that I can't ever remember a time when I didn't.

That's how it always is with me: the thing that sets me down to start writing is usually not what I end up doing. Because, as much as I love genre, and I try to deliver the goods, I go off from it. I go do my own thing.

If the film isn't suspenseful, i.e. the pressure cooker situation of what's going on in the movie, if that's not part of it, if the threat of violence and the temperature isn't always going up a notch every scene or so, then the movie is going to be boring. It's not going to work.

Well, it's funny because, "The Green Leaves of Summer" and "The Alamo" theme are the same thing. There's just - the Brothers Four was a different recording of it.