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.

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 knew I wanted to work in Cinemascope because I find it much more beautiful just in terms of the shape of the screen, the wider image, and it's also less like television, which is important.

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.

There are people who are put on this earth to do everything.

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.

My job, as I see it, is to give you a window into another world and another story, and then to be as graceful as I can so that you don't feel my work or the editor's work or the lens or the light or anything.