The old days of screenwriting, and myths about screenwriting, are maybe over. It's a literary form, if you can wake up to it.

I cut London Boulevard pretty aggressively, but I liked the transitions and the elliptical feel that I got. It's not an exceptionally easy film to follow. You have to know that the paparazzo looks like Mark David Chapman. He hasn't got an expositional sign on him.

I hate doing anything in offices. I either want to be out in the world or in my own environment - and it should be your own environment that you work in.

I came into screenwriting from an odd direction, because the first screenplay that I read was and is better as writing than the top one percent of literary novels.

I love audiences, but they're not there to drive the bus. Whenever you ask opinions or anticipate opinions you can get pretty terrible art, or non-art. You need a single guiding intelligence, even in a collaborative form.

Wisdom is not having illusions, especially anything in your own mind that elevates you above others.

My gratitude to Ridley [Scott] isn't anything new. I named one of my kids after him. But he's a very important person to me.