I have no power, and that's what's so humbling.

I don't mind women who want to act. That's fine. It's odd that men want to act, in that there's still a degree of vanity associated with it.

I thought of Joel Silver. He never changes. He's sort of the unmoving, unchanging rock of Gibraltar in the otherwise-shifting world of Hollywood. He's the same as he always was. He looks the same, talks the same, has the same enthusiasm.

I think the most important thing is to, without belligerence, stand up for what want. Argue compellingly if someone tries to change your script.

I wrote all the time, but the idea of doing it professionally seemed like pie in the sky. Who gets paid to write? I grew up in Pittsburgh, so it wasn't really a notion that a lot of people pursue.

You can win as long as you chose your battles. You can win more arguments then you might think as a writer, even though you legally have no recourse, and your script can get muddied and altered in any way possible. You can use reason, logic, and passion to argue persuasively for a case in your favor. So what I've learned is to just basically not buckle - not be belligerent, not be angry, not throw fits, but just not buckle.

People would say, "Well yeah, if I wrote action films, if I wrote the trash that you write, I could make millions too. But I want to write my real movie about these Guatemalan immigrants, and how they hid under a truck for 300 miles." And that's fine. I'd love to make that film too, but to dismiss everything I did just because it's action seems wrong.