Moving out to L.A. for me was a leap of faith. I was very secure in my dinner theater world; I loved it, and I was just like, 'I think there's something else out there for me and I just have to go for it.'

Theater is my temple and my religion and my act of faith. Strangers sit in a room together and believe together.

You must not demand the failure of your peers, because the more good things that are around in film, in television, in theater - why the better it is for all of us.

Failure in the theater is more dramatic and uglier than any other form of writing. It costs so much, you feel so guilty.

The heart of the theater is the play itself, how it dramatizes life to make it meaningful entertainment. To achieve depth and universality, the playwright must subject himself to intense critique, to know human character and behavior, and finally to construct art from the most mundane of human experience.

I really feel like the horror genre is capable of so much. Especially as an in-theater experience, something you watch with other people. It can do so much.

Writing, of course, is writing, acting comes from the theater, and cinematography comes from photography. Editing is unique to film. You can see something from different points of view almost simultaneously, and it creates a new experience.

Marriage equality is coming, and not merely to a theater near you.

The Washington black community was able to succeed beyond his wildest dreams. I mean, we had our own newspapers, our own restaurants, our own theaters, our own small shops, our own clubs, our own Masonic lodges.

The old studios that mass-produced dreams are gone with the wind, just like the old downtown theaters that were the temples of the dreams.

I grew up on a very specific diet of certain weird movies. Of course, being black, there are more black movies in there. I'll get to bring some of those references into 'Mystery Science Theater 3000.'

I never wanted to work in fashion. At age 12 or 13, I wanted to design for showgirls - for the theater! And I was crazy for the Hollywood of the 1950s: Dietrich, Elizabeth Taylor, Jennifer Jones. They were my idea of glamour - and Sylvie Vartan, the French singer.

At age 12 or 13, I wanted to design for showgirls - for the theater!

Well, I design costumes because I started with the theater in Chicago, but somehow a few lines just sort of fell to me to do it. And I studied it in school and I always liked it.

Nobody has yet proven that taking a chance and doing something unique that an audience isn't used to is a bad idea. What the theater lacks is that kind of courage.

Instead of the cashier and ticket-ripper of the movie theater, the block chain consists of thousands of computers that can process digital tickets, money, and many other fiduciary objects in digital form. Think of thousands of robots wearing green eye shades, all checking each other's accounting.

Theaters are always going to be around, and doing fine. With computers and technology, we're becoming more and more secluded from each other. And the movie theater is one of the last places where we can still gather and experience something together. I don't think the desire for that magic will ever go away.

I would love to create a piece of theater that is devised by a company of actors and creators that I'd put together, and I'd love for it to be nonverbal so it's something that someone with any communication ability can enjoy.

I'm interested in the theater because I'm interested in communication with audiences. Otherwise I would be in concert music.

I believe that no matter what you do in life, if you learn the basics through theater, it will help you in everything else - problem solving, communication, discipline, all of that stuff.

I loved 'White Christmas' for the music aspect. I was into musical theater.

Miramax seems to be showing the same faith in Roberto Benigni's 'Pinocchio' that the Republican Party showed in Trent Lott; the live-action version of Carlo Collodi's fairy tale about the wooden puppet whose only ambition was to be a real live boy was sneaked into theaters Christmas Day.

I didn't do a movie until I was almost 30. I'm grateful for that because it gave me a chance to be an adult in the world and do work in the regional theater that very few people cared about. I loved it and I wanted to do that stuff.

Variety is very, very good. Going from medium to medium, if you get the chance to do it, from theater to television to film, which are all distinctly different, keeps me sharp.