I don't believe in reincarnation. That's a cop-out. . . . I anticipate death will be a totally unconscious void in which you float through eternity with no particular consciousness of anything.

I don't have close relationships with agents. They're friends, but they're not confidants.

Do I want to start my own production company? No, I doubt it. I'm too old for that. I don't want to start anything.

Essentially, the scripts are not that different. Let's say, in literary terms, it's the difference between writing horizontally and writing vertically. In live television, you wrote much more vertically. You had to probe people because you didn't have money or sets or any of the physical dimensions that film will allow you. So you generally probed people a little bit more. Film writing is much more horizontal. You can insert anything you want: meadows, battlefields, the Taj Mahal, a cast of thousands. But essentially, writing a story is writing a story.

Personally, my daughter's wedding gave me a tremendous pleasure. And the wedding was a radiant event and I enjoyed it. I was afraid I'd cry. I'm given to crying at odd times, and I was very much afraid of the emotionalism of that moment, but I didn't even come close to crying.

I guess Requiem for a Heavyweight as old as it is was as honest a piece as I've ever done.

I'm an affluent screenwriter and all that - I'm a known screenwriter, but I'm not in the fraternity of the very, very major people. I would say a guy like Ernie Lehman, William Goldman, and a few others are quite a cut above.