I remember saying goodbye to my father the night he left to join the Navy. He didn't have to. He was older than other servicemen and had a family to support but he wanted to be a part of the fight against fascism not just make movies about it. I admired this about him.

I've always wanted to get into acting ever since I was younger. I'd put on shows for my family and run around play dress-up all the time. I think I was 4 when I told them I wanted to do movies.

My family and our neighbors and friends thought of Africa and its Africans as extensions of the stereotyped characters that we saw in movies and on television in films such as 'Tarzan' and in programs such as 'Ramar of the Jungle' and 'Sheena Queen of the Jungle.'

Thinking back to those earlier days I felt I was weak when I wasn't making movies and then when I was I thought I was weak as a family member.

There comes a point in your moviegoing life where you look at the screen and then you look at the world and you ask 'What is going on?' You want the movies to show you the chaos and mess and risk and failure that are normal for a lot of us. Generally the movies hide all of that.

I mean I love L.A. - I love living here. But I wish that we could make things without the need to hit a home run every single time. It's a unique thing to Hollywood that if you don't do that every time then you're considered a failure. But it's like 'Well are you making movies to be successful? Or are you making movies to learn something?'

I love music and after my first experience with movies I can't wait to do more.

If you're working on a movie you want it to be projected on the largest tapestry possible and the sound to be perfect and for that kind of communal experience of the movies to take place for it.

In some movies you feel like you're a very small part of a huge machine. Whereas in the theater you can have a very small part but you can still feel the weight and the gravity of it. Given the nature of theater it's a more concentrated and quiet experience.

But in the back of my mind I've always looked to the biggest-scale Hollywood movies. Because to me the most satisfying experience is of watching a movie if it's done really well. And so that aspiration is always it for me if I have the opportunity to do it.

Making movies is a very different experience in a lot of ways. It's difficult when you're used to owning the copyright and having a landlord's possessory rights - I rent my plays to the companies that do them and if I'm upset I can pull the play. But the only two directors I've worked with are pretty great.

Lord of the Rings was my first experience making movies and at the time I had no ideas how movies were done. I thought that's the way they're done so in a way I had nothing to compare it to.

When you go to the movies with your whole family it's a different experience. For some reason it's something that you're all doing together and you take away something special in that.

Sometimes when we weep in the movies we weep for ourselves or for a life unlived. Or we even go to the movies because we want to resist the emotion that's there in front of us. I think there is always a catharsis that I look for and that makes the movie experience worthwhile.

How do people relate to movies now when they're on portable devices or streaming them? It's not as much about going to the movies. That experience has changed.

Very often I've known people who wouldn't say a word to each other but they'd go to see movies together and experience life that way.

Normally I love to go to the movies and when I see a character portrayed by different actors at different ages it kind of pops a little bit for me. It brings me out of the movie experience. Now we have the technology to cure that.

There's only one thing that can kill the movies and that's education.

I love my early movies but naturalism is an artist's early style. Now I want to deal with feelings dreams an acceptance of irrationality.

I feel more influenced in my own work by dreams than I do by other writers' works in a way. Or by popular culture movies - what else is there to write about than love and loss?

If dreams are like movies then memories are films about ghosts.

I think violence cynicism brutality and fashion are the staples of our diet. I think in the grand history of story-telling going back to people sitting around fires the dark side of human nature has always been very important. Movies are part of that tradition.

I was a cartoonist when I was at university but I decided to go into movie making knowing that I could still draw by doing movies design work story boards and such.

Hitchcock had to fight to the death to make his movies.