When you only have $15 million, you have to talk about something interesting. You can't just cut to a helicopter exploding.

Any time anyone fires bullets in an action movie that don't hit the target it immediately undermines the movie.

The only way you can stay on top is to remember to touch bottom and get back to basics.

When you are making a lot of money people forget you are trying to be creative and they picture you laughing all the way to the bank ... especially with an action script, automatically it gets boo-hooed as being worthless. It was very difficult to hear that sort of thing and I lost a good many friends over money issues because they didn't have money or their scripts weren't selling and mine were.

I have these guilty pleasures, these failed films that don't work at all, but I'll watch them if they're on. Like 'The Game'.

Probably my favorite piece of music, as an album taken as a whole, is Bruce Springsteen's 'Greetings from Asbury Park.' I just think it's incredibly pure. It's a sound that sort of broke new ground, and I think it paved the way for a hundred people that sound very similar.

Once I started selling scripts for a great deal of money - action scripts, no less, which people tend to pooh-pooh anyway - then I started to get some backlash. Which I didn't mind.