If you write a screenplay that gets circulated, you have a bigger readership than any literary novelist. And it's an educated audience as well.

I don't move until an actor is happy, but it was very important to me as a so-called "first time director" to keep the machine moving. It was especially important to me to keep it moving and not be some kind of precious writer-director.

If you decide to do Hamlet in a funny hat staged in a ruined factory, it doesn't make you Shakespeare.

It's interesting to think that my children know more about the process than many mature critics.

I had a long writing history behind me before I got into anything in film. It comprehended science fiction, it comprehended historical, it comprehended, you know, just about everything that you can think of.

As far as executing work is concerned, you do it all in order. You do it in contractual order. There's no overlap, it's just continuation of your ordinary work. You move from one project into another.

A writer is a performer as well. A writer isn't the literary department. That gets tried on but nothing's a script unless a good writer goes away and does his thing alone.