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

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.

Relationship films are political. If a woman is sitting in a waiting room in an office and a man walks in and sits down, it's a political situation. If he decides to smoke, does he ask her or does he just light up? If he lights up, what does she do? It's politics.

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.

I don't know about liberal bias, but people of a liberal mentality are probably attracted in greater numbers to the arts than people of a conservative mentality.

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

When you work without a script, you are in a sense working in a much more improvisational way than when you are prepared totally.