Redrafts can be very lucrative for me, but you must understand that if films go through many drafts or writers it's because someone doesn't want to do the picture and never will.

I'm usually the first guy to propose a change because I'm continuing my process. We're in a context, in this business, a context in which most screenplays work on a very modest level of achievement, in that a lot of them aren't really written by what you would call writers.

If TV seems improved, I think it's been enhanced by violence and sex permissible on cable, as well as better cinematography, but in the end it's really only soap operas like your grandmother's afternoon "stories" and that's all it wants to be or has to be.

Most films go out like skydivers who have had their chutes packed by a committee of blind schizophrenics.

The thing about movies is if somebody has an idea that works, it's in, and I say that as a screenwriter as well as a director.

The era I love most is the Federal period, just after the Revolution and the formation of the United States. The birth of America as a nation coincided with the Romantic era and I've always been thoroughly into the Romantics and I've always been thoroughly into America, particularly at the time when it was a brand new idea, when it was something brand new in the world. It was a very exciting time in the world because of the birth of America

I was particularly anxious that I shoot the tires out of the class system. All it is these days is a hobby of certain masochists, and certain sadists.