I was making a lot of 8mm home movies, since I was twelve, making little dramas and comedies with the neighborhood kids.

I just had a crazy, wild imagination all my life, and science fiction is the greatest outlet for me.

My dad took me out to see a meteor shower when I was a little kid, and it was scary for me because he woke me up in the middle of the night. My heart was beating; I didn't know what he wanted to do. He wouldn't tell me, and he put me in the car and we went off, and I saw all these people lying on blankets, looking up at the sky.

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.

I don't really distinguish between a fictional hero and a real life hero as a basis for any comparison. To me, a hero is a hero. I like making pictures about people who have a personal mission in life or at least in the life of a story who start out with certain low expectations and then over achieve our highest expectations for them. That's the kind of character arc I love dabbling in as a director, as a filmmaker.

I wouldn't have filmed The Color Purple if the book had been a big fat novel. The reason I read it is because it is thin.

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