'The Color Purple' is the kind of character piece that a director like Sidney Lumet could do brilliantly with one hand tied behind his back.

I'm very used to working with first time actors - you can just look back at 'E.T.' with Drew Barrymore, and Christian Bale from 'Empire of the Sun,' who'd never made a movie before.

My early exposure to all the leviathans of the Saturday matinee creature features inspired me, when I grew up, to make 'Jurassic Park.'

I've got a lot of examples about moments where I thought something would work on film and it didn't work, but I never came to that decision with the film half shot, where I was stuck on a runaway train and couldn't jump off. On those occasions where I have admitted defeat, that this is not going to work, I haven't embarked on that project and made that movie.

There is a fine line between censorship and good taste and moral responsibility.

I guess my first digital movie was 'Tintin' because 'Tintin' has no film step. There is no intermediate film step. It's 100% digital animation, but as far as a live-action film, I'm still planning to shoot everything on film.

I think all directors should be animators.