L.A. is so big that if you don't actually live in Hollywood, you might as well be from a different planet.

To me, truth is the big thing. Constantly you're writing something and you get to a place where your characters could go this way or that and I just can't lie. The characters have gotta be true to themselves.

"Dukes of Hazzard" or something you could, you know that, your work is going to be made up of that - episodic television shows. Not that I got many of them, but that was where I - but actually oddly enough though, they were teaching camera terminology at the same time in this acting class, so I actually was able to understand what rack focus and whip pan and all that stuff meant.

To me "King Kong" is a metaphor for America's fear of the black male. And to me that's obvious. All right? So I mean that was one of the first things I said when I was talking to a friend of mine after he saw Peter Jackson's version of "King Kong."

Spaghetti Westerns are really brutal and operatic with a surreal quality to the violence.

When I'm writing something, I try not to get analytical about it as I'm doing it, as I'm writing it.

It hit me that an Apache resistance would be a wonderful, you know, it would be a wonderful metaphor for Jewish-American soldiers to be using behind enemy lines against the Nazis because the Apache Indians... were able to fight off for decades both the Spaniards and the Mexicans and the U.S. Cavalry for years because of their - they were great guerrilla fighters. They were great resistance fighters. And one of their ways of winning battles was psychological battles.