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

People aren't interested in paying $10 or $12 to go to the movies and to be lectured to politically. I'm not either. So I don't try to make those kinds of films.

My films ought to be judged on whether they're entertaining or good as films, but not on the political view necessarily. I'm trying to be morally responsible and no more. I don't have an agenda I'm trying to push.

You know, essentially when you do a play you're reinterpreting a work of art that already exists. That's not what happens with a movie.

And I taught acting for years, and without knowing it that was the real thing that started bending me toward directing.

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

Most human beings who are accustomed to attempting to see the world from various points of view tend to be more liberal than conservative. I have one life. I am a certain age. I'm married to one person. I have a certain number of children. I won't have another life other than that, but I do have many lives through the films. It's 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.