I get so used to working with writers that my prime occupation is development.

What you do, is you gradually become more and more experienced, and more and more realistic about dramatic tolerance, i.e. about how long the play should be.

There's nothing really original. Alien was a B-movie. Five directors passed on it before me. Because I was into Heavy Metal, I read it, and thought, "Wow, I want to do this." I was on a plane to Hollywood in 22 hours. It was a B-movie and was elevated to an A-plus movie by sheer good taste.

Scaring someone's the hardest thing to do, and that's why most of scary movies are not scary. They're sick, but not scary. There's a lot of sickness out there, of people who then sit there and watch it, which I think is absolutely dismaying.

I do a pretty good job at casting actually.

It's the best of the best. No film can hope to top it(Kubrick's 2001).

I do like to make films with a political theme, but sometimes it's nice simply to make people laugh. That's the hardest thing to do in fact.