You can't do the end of the world in a conventionally dramatic way or Boy Meets Girl way.

When I finally made it to the set, I spent a lot of time doing damage control on The Magic Christian.

Someone wrote a piece about Henry Green in The Partisan Review that was so intriguing that I got one of his novels, Loving, I believe, which was the first that came to attention in the United States.

In the case of The Loved One, I was hired to collaborate on an updated version of the book.

An absolutely devastating ridicule of all that is false, primitive, and vicious in current American life: the abuses of power, hero worship, aimless violence, materialistic obsession, intolerance, and every form of hypocrisy.

In that sense, film is superior, but the difficulty is your lack of control as a writer.

I learned not to care ... and to write for an imaginary reader whose tastes were similar to my own.