I'm not a very good predictor in any area of art, particularly my own. I don't know how to evaluate that.

Well, I was born and raised in the Midwest, in Indiana specifically, and my childhood was full of weekend movies, you know, the Saturday and Sunday popcorn movies.

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

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.

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

I think it's a terrible shame that politics has become show business.

I tend to be what I would call more progressive than conservative, but I think either extreme is excessive.