It's always interesting to play people different from yourself, it would be boring for me to play myself.

Well, the wonderful thing about making movies, oddly enough, is that they're sort of highly motivated graduate studies in one or another field.

Three Days of the Condor is still an interesting film to watch not because it's political. It happens to be political. But that's not why the sales of the DVDs are as high as they are. It's because it's an entertaining thriller. In my opinion, Tootsie is a very political movie but truck drivers can go and laugh at it.

I love having made a film and watching it when it affects audiences in a positive way. It was always fun for me to hide in the back of a theater and watch Tootsie with an audience and hear them laugh. And it's gratifying 20 years later to imagine that they still can find it amusing.

Hollywood was set up by a bunch of businessmen. They do not see their job as being philanthropists. I don't think it's a contradiction in terms to attempt to be a good businessman and to also be liberal.

When you make a film you usually make a film about an idea.

Reading a novel of a private experience, very, very different, the nature of it is very different.