You learn to do your best writing on story rather than off story. Very often at the beginning of their careers, writers including me do their best dialogue writing off story - the best lines, the best observations - but they haven't got enough to do with the plot to stay in.

I think everybody has a little rule follower and a little rule breaker in them.

It's funny when you put music up against picture, and all your preconceptions go away, and you start over. You just realize that that doesn't work at all.

Believe me, you can be in the middle of a beautiful take and the next thing you know you're awash in people crossing the street. You can't even find your actors.

You're not always right. You're often wrong. But at least you're looking at it as objectively as you can with as much experience as you can in the moment and saying, "Yeah, I think it's funny" or "No, I don't think it's funny yet."

When your characters are not white hats or black hats but something in between, you do have to be very careful about your details. So, that takes a while. I'm not interested in white hats and black hats. I don't think that's how people are in real life.

I like to write about love plus an obstacle. Not a really big obstacle; not too serious and not too funny. Just somewhere nicely in between - a combination of the two.