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.

On historical you take the known facts, dramatize them, and then stitch them together by invention. It's a projective thing.

The first time I ever thought about doing a film seriously, I was in London. I was about 17 years old. I was just standing in the street, a bit dazzled by an Antonioni bus wipe, which by the way are inherent in London, and I imagined a film set in London starting out with the riff from The Yardbird's "Heart Full of Soul", and now, how ever many years later, I've done it.

When I'm shooting, as much as writing, I see edited footage in my mind, so I work that way, and it's economical.

I'm a homebody, as many writers are, and need to be by myself, and I like to be by the Atlantic Ocean.

[Eugene] O'Neill made a living, certainly, at least. But each of these forms have sort of died the death in turn, and it's a simple fact of that universe that talent then migrates away from these forms, and then the amateurs get in, like lunatics in the ruins, sort of pretending to be artists. If you're ambitious enough to want to be a writer to begin with, you want to be a writer in some circumstances where there are rewards, where there's notice, where you don't have to be a teacher, and where you're frankly not nuts for wasting your time.

Star Wars was great at the beginning and crap at the end while Star Trek has always been interesting, and the difference is in the writing, and the thematic intentions.