It's always hard to explain why an audience ultimately responds to a movie.

I got a chance to work with Mel Brooks on two of his films: Silent Movie and High Anxiety.

First of all, just to get Diner made would have been an achievement in that I got a chance to direct.

There's no downside to having too much experience.

You don't always have to have the ending, but you want to have a satisfactory conclusion.

A lot of time mistakes are very interesting - you look for the behaviour that's not the one you expect.

I think certain movies work and that is part of the magic of it all. We can't truly define why something succeeds.

I got involved with an acting school and studied for a couple years. They used to have improv exercises that you would work on and you would do improvs.

When I began to think about the head of the family, the storyteller, the rise of television which became the new storyteller, the break-up of the American family as an idea and then Avalon came.

Craig Nelson who is an actor and is in a show called Coach in the United States. We began to do some improvisational stuff and we used to get laughs and things.

Some actors are supposed to be very difficult, but I've not found that to be the situation.

George, she says it's the truth that matters. We live and die for the chance to maybe tell a little bit of the truth, maybe shame the Devil just a little bit before we go.

The purpose of life is not to fight against evil and misfortune; it is to unveil magnificence.

I play a nobody in Japan.

There's nothing more boring than actors talking about acting.

Armies, and debts, and taxes are the known instruments for bringing the many under the domination of the few.

Getting that first draft out is a horribly hard grind, but that (perversely) is where the joy of it lies.

Sometimes you get into a situation and realize that there is so much more to explore there and ask, why are we jumping off the cliff quite yet?

He - A.J.[Muste] never got much credit, never got much attention. For example, I wrote a biography of him and nobody ever heard of it.

Human rights are not only violated by terrorism, repression or assassination, but also by unfair economic structures that creates huge inequalities.

Zen says everything is divine so how can anything be special? All is special. Nothing is non-special so nothing can be special.