That can be undersold, I think, the importance when you're trying to do something good is that everybody understands the director's vision, everybody believes in it, and everybody can find their own path to supporting it, and that's how you end with a great movie.

Somebody pointed out to me that there's no horror film on my resume, which is true, but I also don't really go see those movies. Although when I was thinking about it, I was thinking "I would probably have a really nice beach house if I made a horror movie." They seem to be very popular. I just don't think it's my thing.

The industry has changed in big ways. When I started making movies, the studios were not all owned by huge conglomerates, so the decisions were made in a very different way. Over the years, I've watched both the rise and the decimation and fall of the DVD as a portion of where you could generate revenue from making this kind of content. We've seen this change in the balance sheet on the international side of the ledger; it's now a much bigger percentage than it is on domestic, even though movies would have been previously really domestically driven.

The first thing you do as a producer is you try to understand the director's vision in as deeply a way as you can. Sometimes, you end up with a director that has more vision or sometime they have less vision. You hope that they have more. In the case where they have more, you need to understand it in the deepest way you can.

The crazy thing is, I sent out 200 letters and I got one job interview, and I actually got that job, which was working as a development assistant at Joel Silver's company. I always say that to people when they ask "What do I do?" and I'm like, "Look, I didn't get ten responses, and I didn't get five interviews, but I got one interview, and I got the job," and that was all I needed.

There's a thing about Hollywood where there are at least a couple of guys that behind closed doors and in small circles we think of as having a magical P.T. Barnum quality. Which is to say, they may not be the most talented, and they may not be the smartest, but their movies made money or won awards, so they move ahead.

I don't think actually that kind of ego check or "I could do better" mentality probably serves better in Hollywood, because it's definitely not a meritocracy. You can look at any number of careers and sort of see that they don't really make sense if it was only based on your movies working either creatively or financially. There are people that move ahead without that, and there are people that don't move ahead even if they did have that.