Sometimes, anonymous sources, when merely stating opinions or running a smear campaign, are certainly cowards.
Rod Lurie
I do have this belief that we all have a chance to be great, beautiful people based on how we are raised and our surroundings.
What actor doesn't want to walk around a set and be called 'Mr. President?' Playing POTUS is a kind of rite of passage among American actors - our version of playing Hamlet.
I thought I'd give myself 10 years as an entertainment journalist and build up so much clout that there was no way Hollywood could ignore me when I started delivering scripts. Little did I know they were very good at ignoring it.
We are viewed by the world as a quasi-racist state in which we allow natural disasters to obliterate our minority community, in which our penal system is designed to treat blacks unfairly, and in which we let the medical and educational systems in our ghettos fester to the level of some third-world countries.
I admire how Tarantino finds music that's semifamiliar and not famous: undiscovered gems.
I shot part of 'Resurrecting the Champ' in Denver, and I spent a summer going to survival school in Colorado Springs.
Just because the boogeyman of the Soviet Union doesn't exist anymore, it doesn't mean the world is living angelically.
As for Kate Bosworth, I've always admired her. I watched her in a movie called 'Girl in the Park,' which has never been released - not even on DVD. I had a copy, and it was bravura acting I had not seen from her.
My mom is an exceptionally wise and kind person.
It's not such a bad thing to bring some naive optimism to Washington.
Some nights I lie awake at night thinking, 'What's going to stop someone from smashing a chair through my window and coming in the house at two in the morning?' It is very unnerving. It's a realistic scare, which is the worst kind of scare that you could have.
'Monsters of God' isn't just a series close to my heart; it is my heart, and I am very much looking forward to working with my fantastic team in New Mexico to create a top-notch series.
There was scarcely a month during 1988 when Thomas Harris' novel, 'The Silence Of The Lambs,' was not on or around the top of the 'New York Times' list of America's bestselling books.
The First Amendment is the First Amendment for a reason - our most cherished right. But it often creates muddy and uncomfortable situations, ones that are the source of great drama and national self-reflection.
I think that 'Straw Dogs' as a story is eminently re-makable. It can be modernized and Americanized without a problem and without giving up any artistic integrity.
When you hire Sam Jackson, he'll figure out the character, and he'll figure out the character's look, and he'll provide it to you. With Sam Jackson, you basically yell 'action', you go get a sandwich, and you come back and yell 'cut.'
I often found that my favorite scene that I shoot is often one that I cut out, like in 'The Last Castle' and 'The Contender.' If you look at the deleted scenes, some of the best scenes never made it into the film.
I am a liberal. I have always been a liberal.
I loved going to the movies, especially when I was a teenager in the seventies. How couldn't you in what was perhaps the greatest era of auteur cinema?
Somebody - and I'm going to guess it was Hitchcock - once said that everyone has their reasons. If you remember that, as a writer, you'll write better than average villains.
The fight to get a shield law barring the government from being able to jail journalists is itself a non-partisan battle.
Simply stated, sometimes journalists can only get their information from informants who must remain anonymous in order to protect their careers and sometimes even their lives: Watergate: Confidential sources. The Pentagon Papers: Confidential sources. Enron: Confidential sources.
I look at 'Straw Dogs' as a very imperfect movie. It's a little bit slow, and its themes are a little bit murky.
When you do a freeze frame, you have the opportunity to find the exact shot that you want - no guessing.
There's no need to make any film. The word 'need' is pretty strong. But if there's a purpose behind making the film, there can be a justification for it.
I think people were a little premature in writing off violent movies. They're going to continue being made, and audiences will continue going to see them.
When I was a kid, my heroes were not baseball players nor movie stars. My knights in shining armor were film critics.
The truth is that we're not remaking Sam Peckinpah's 'Straw Dogs,' we're making 'Straw Dogs.' We're taking this story, and we're putting our own spin on it. The mere fact that I have James Marsden in it is an indication that it's a very different film than the one that had Dustin Hoffman in it.
As much as I like Michael Moore - and I'm on the same political side as him - I think his documentaries are really a batch of manipulations and lies.
What makes a man is when you go against your own instincts to do to the right thing.
I'll tell you this: you can look at all the masculine toughies you want - the Ben Roethlisbergers, the Russell Crowes, the David Petraeuses - but if you want to look at what a man should be - persevering, honest, a person who manifests his intellect into action - you need look no further than Roger Ebert.
Classically, throughout all of our history, the movies in times of crisis have turned to military figures as heroes, because they are the guardians of our nation.
The common denominator of the great women leaders in the world - Indira Gandhi, Margaret Thatcher, Golda Meir - is that they're dramatically nonsexual.
You will never - and I mean never - be able to figure out if I was an Obama guy or a Hillary guy.
I still viewed myself as a reviewer when I was on radio. Was it appropriate for me? I think the answer is it's only inappropriate if I allowed it to affect my film reviewing. I don't think you will find any studio that said, 'Yeah, he went easy on us because he was shopping a script.'
Trump is the opposite of everything Reagan was.
I met Joan Allen at an L.A. Film Critics Awards' dinner, and I said, 'I want to write a movie for you.'
I came to the conviction that film criticism, in and of itself, was an art.
I can be accused of being acerbic as a critic and writer.
Every weekend from, like, 1974 to 1978, I'd trudge over to the Greenwich library, which gathered up almost every major newspaper in the country. I would sit there all day long and read and read and read the reviews. I remember being twelve or thirteen and writing to Judith Crist, Pauline Kael, and Roger Ebert.
I think that most of the young officers I know are leftists and liberals and Democrats. And the reason is this: All of our soldiers, the men that work for us directly, are minorities - blacks or Latinos. And we empathize with them. Our job is to advise them and help them.
Unfortunately, in this country, when we have the opportunity to be bigots in private, we take it every time.
The ability of the press to print their stories without the government trying to get them to betray their sources is as essential to a free press as the ink it is printed with. Otherwise, who will hold accountable those who hold power over us?
When reporters are in the business of obtaining hard facts that service the free flow of information, journalists should have a right to obtain that information without fear of personal ruin or incarceration.
I grew up in the home of a political cartoonist, so I was a junkie for politics.
I was just nine years old when 'Straw Dogs' came out, so I can't really speak to the women of the time, but I can tell you that the women of 2011 are not put-upon, and they're not victims.
'Nothing But the Truth' is a journalistic thriller that is set during the end of days for print media.
Finding out you're able to do something doesn't necessarily mean you want to do it.
I've been a huge fan of Steven Bochco's for over two decades.
