Lest we forget: It is easy to be human, very hard to be humane
Film provides an opportunity to marry the power of ideas with the power of images.
Hill Street Blues might have been the first television show that had a memory. One episode after another was part of a cumulative experience shared by the audience.
Being a good television screenwriter requires an understanding of the way film accelerates the communication of words.
When all of your decisions are based on economics, you end up with a sameness of vision. You're not taking the risks, you're not exploiting the passions of your creators. You're manufacturing product for a huge vending machine.
Vivid images are like a beautiful melody that speaks to you on an emotional level. It bypasses your logic centers and even your intellect and goes to a different part of the brain.
Casting is sort of like looking at paintings. You don't know what you'll like, but you recognize it when you see it.
As honour, love, obedience, troops of friends, I must not look to have; but, in their stead, Curses, not loud but deep, mouth-honour, breath, Which the poor heart would fain deny, and dare not" (5. 3. 25-28).
Confronting your fears and allowing yourself the right to be human can, paradoxically, make you a far happier and more productive person.
A poem's essential discovery can happen at a single sitting. The cascade of discoveries in an essay, or even finding a question worth exploring in one, seems to need roughly the time it takes to plant and harvest a crop of bush beans.
No press conference announcing a last film. I'd just steal away. Best way because, if by chance after two or three years something interesting comes up, I would not - like Sinatra - have to say: 'Well, I've thought it over and decided to come back. '