It crossed our minds early on that the more an audience cared - we were working before, on average, 240, live people. If you could get them caring - the more they cared, the harder they laughed.
I wanted to just do a one-act play for 26 minutes, with commercials at the beginning and end. For years, I couldn't get my way. They wanted to interrupt three times.
You can't really do a big character in an action film; you're already suspending your disbelief in the action, then to suspend your disbelief in the character is too much.
In the past, in the '60s and '70s, genres were much more segmented. You had action guys who were deadly serious about it, and I think you had comics that were comics.
Billions have been spent for one purpose and one purpose only: to obscure and distract from the fact that Mitt Romney is backing the identical agenda George W. Bush did.
That's always the trick with the sequels, is how much do you repeat from the first one. Because we all get bummed out when you go see a sequel and it's beat for beat.
Wal-Mart is the biggest distributor of DVDs out there, but personally, I think their manufacturing policies have destroyed our economy, and they don't pay their employees enough. I have massive problems with them.
But, yes, I learned everything working in theater. I learned the importance of community - I was constantly going to play readings, stand-up nights, improv. nights.
The funniest things just come from honesty. We have a tendency to see female characters as representative of something larger than what they are, when male characters are just characters.
A movie is like a tip of an iceberg, in a way, because so little of what you do in connection with making a movie actually gets into the movie. Almost everything gets left behind.
Films are neither true nor false. That includes my films, as well as others. They may make claims that are true or false, but films are too complex. They have too many ingredients.
I think there's not a lot of real filmmakers. There are only a few people who make real cinema. I can count them on my fingers.
Don't you think if I was able to make some changes, I would have already?
I was starting to become impotent through this diet and couldn't perform. How many people who are taking the little blue pill, if they started to change what they are eating most of the time, could change the way their sex life is?
I've got great people who handle my schedule, and everything does revolve around the children. If there's a parents' night or an Easter bonnet parade or a Nativity play, whatever it might be, then I plan everything around that.
When I think of the 1980s, the only color that comes to mind is a brown, yellowish color. I guess it's coming from my life experience, and it's melancholia and sadness and a bit of joy.
No, my profile has leaped over recent years, so has my life experience, and I look forward to the next 30 years being even more rewarding and satisfying than the previous 60!
It's hard to conceive of someone who could work for at least a few hours each day for months and years on the same story without it being close enough to their life experience to fuel their commitment.
Everything is so chaotic. My nervous system can't handle it. I need my peace, so, every once in a while, while the kids are at school, I lie in bed, close the curtains, watch television and eat food.
My big philosophy is: Try and work with good people, because the process is your life. That's going to be really, really hard. I'm glad I learned the lesson, 'Failure is OK.'
War is tragedy. The great war stories are tragedies. It's the failure of diplomacy. 'War and Peace,' 'A Farewell to Arms,' 'For Whom the Bell Tolls.' Those are some of the greatest tragedies.
