I love editorial and sound and music, and I was working with the best people, so you learn a lot.

Actors are players and if they're hot, or onto something, you let them go, or you and the actor can both get on to something. I always run out with lines as I think of them.

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

I've always been a bit repelled by "Sunset Boulevard", which is wrong about almost everything it touches, whether it's fame, Hollywood, screenwriters, or old ladies. Sunset Boulevard would only make sense to me if it was about John Gilbert and the pool boy.

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 went into directing having observed and learned from the best. There was a certain standard of procedure. I found that I was equal to it. I thoroughly enjoyed directing, I liked it a lot. It's very satisfactory to see that you can do it. The art takes care of itself.

As a director, you're given a tremendous apparatus to work with, and very great talents are available to you.