You have to be in California in order to write or direct movies. People say, "Oh, I'm gonna do it from Pittsburgh. I'm just gonna deliver scripts or fly out, like, once, then fly back." You have to make a full commitment. You have to actually get on a plane, come to L.A., rent a place, and live there. And that's how you forge your career. Not just sort of haphazardly. Once you've got a few hits under your belt, assuming you do, then go back and move away and correspond with the studio.

I'm ashamed to say this, but I watched every episode of 'Starsky and Hutch' as a kid. I loved that show, but now I think it's stupid - they'd have a car chase for no reason, then Paul Michael Glaser would shoot the car and it would blow up.

I always have humour in my action movies. I think characters that make jokes under fire are more real. It somehow helps put you in their shoes.

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.

For years I was doing the excruciating weightlifting of writing scripts - but then I stayed thin and someone else got all the muscles.

The worst of the action films are the ones where everything is one shout from beginning to finish. And there's no differentiation between beats, like small or big, or quiet or expansive. It's all just one loud shout.

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.