When they see you get what you want and move on, quickly, you've done a contract with the crew from that point. In Britain if the sparks call you Guv on day two, you never need an award of any other kind.

You just have to know what you want and what you're doing and it leads to a kind of general well-being, which I think you sensed when you were there.

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

You can believe in originals only if you just don't know their context within literature. Certainly I believe in originality, but it lies with the teller, not the tale.

There were days when you would get the TV listings from The Globe and The Herald. Video was out, but nobody could afford it...expect for my uncle George, who was a second father to me, and had every film in the world, and every book.

Redrafts can be very lucrative for me, but you must understand that if films go through many drafts or writers it's because someone doesn't want to do the picture and never will.

Whatever you cut when there's no deadline isn't really a cut. You're just pushing colors around.