The greatest films ever made in our history were cut on film, and I'm tenaciously hanging on to the process. I just love going into an editing room and smelling the photochemistry and seeing my editor wearing mini-strands of film around his neck.

I hate that people think it's wrong to say you're inspired by Jaws or by Raiders Of The Lost Ark. You're allowed to be.

Even if I'd had a really happy relationship with my father and there was no emotional hiatus for a decade and a half, I probably would still have made some of the same choices for movies that I've made.

I've always been interested in how we survive and how resourceful we are as Americans.

It starts with the writer-it's a familiar dictum, but somehow it keeps getting forgotten along the way. No film-maker, irrespective of his electronic bag of tricks, can ever afford to forget his commitment to the written word.

You never really know how good of a leader you are until there is something there is lead us to, toward or through or to overcome.

I committed to directing 'Catch Me If You Can' not because of the divorce component, but principally because Frank Abagnale did things that were the most astonishing scams I had ever heard.