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.

Cell phones tend to bring us more inside of our lives whereas movies offer a chance to escape, so there are two competing forces.

Remember, science fiction's always been the kind of first level alert to think about things to come. It's easier for an audience to take warnings from sci-fi without feeling that we're preaching to them. Every science fiction movie I have ever seen, any one that's worth its weight in celluloid, warns us about things that ultimately come true.

Why pay a dollar for a bookmark? Why not use the dollar for a bookmark?

And I may often question choices I make as a producer. But I've never questioned the choices I make as a director.

I think that a movie can only be an adjunct or only a supplement to books, to different points of view, to scholars, historians and your own teachers.

With all the movies I've made about history, it's not really fun because you're trying to get it right. You've got history telling how it was, and then my imagination is telling me how I wish it had been, but I can't go there, so I have to censor myself. I'm very good about stopping myself from creating history that never occurred, but it's frustrating.