When I was a kid, I was taken to something called Telenews in Cleveland by my best friend's father. My own father was gone by the time I was 5, I think, but this man would take us to Telenews at the end of World War II, and we'd watch all these newsreels. I'd seen real stuff. That kind of stuck in my mind.

People who are kind of at the cutting edge of life and survival, and being near the nitty-gritty, like my films, and I like that.

I make something I can look at and say, "That's a good piece of work, and there's some terrific directing and acting in it, and you should be proud of it."

Dad, girls don't fall down every time they run.

I came from a very strict background. [So if you want to make a scary movie] if you were raised as a fundamentalist, just pull all the skeletons out of your closet.

I have a lot of fans who are people of color. I think, if nothing else, I kind of understand that sense of being on the outside looking in, culturally.

But I made him the Deputy Secretary for Homeland Security because that added an element of political espionage.