The dance that happens, between actor and director, is a very delicate thing...it's why people tend to work together on many films over and over.

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

There's a religious basis to their [Bush and Chaney] kind of conservatism. It's rooted in a kind of fundamentalism. I'm afraid of that. I don't like that idea. I think all extremism is suspect.

Making a film is a way for me to understand what it's like to be a murderer, to confess, to be a beaten wife, to be a minority, to be a victor, to get the girl, to lose the girl. I can do all of that through the practice of an art form.

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

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.

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.