I'm not a precious text protector, or anything like that, you know, because it's a much more vital form than that. You have to rock.

Look at what people are trying to conceal, and you’ll see that they’re revealing everything.

They're done by guys who have talked a good game and then have scrambled together the simulacrum of a drama, so actors are habituated to sometimes having to save a picture on the floor because it's usually part of their job, but they'd rather have a writer doing his job, so that they can do theirs. But I like nothing better than working with actors.

Casting is all about availability, as much as anything else.

London matters to me because it's the center of what I do for a living and has been since Tudor times.

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

I'm a guy whose first motion picture experience was seeing Ridley Scott glide past on a camera on a hundred and fifty million dollar film, and prep two movies, and there is no way to overstate that when you've worked with Ridley, it's like having been a quarterdeck lieutenant to Lord Nelson.