You know a shooter when you see it. At least the creative people do. If a picture isn't obvious in the first draft you're kind of screwed.

The old days of screenwriting, and myths about screenwriting, are maybe over. It's a literary form, if you can wake up to it.

I think probably everybody works most on the beginning and the ending.

If you need someone to come out of the sewer with a wire you don't hire someone who needs laborious collective instruction. You let someone do his job, whether he's a focus puller or a surgeon.

When I was a kid in London there was just something about the light and there's something about the way London went onto film in those days, whether it was Technicolor or Technicolor plus the flatness of the light, or whatever.

You never know what people are going to go and see.

In all honesty a gangster picture was the easiest kind of film for me to get made.