I feel that my job is to create an atmosphere where creative people can do their best work.

The first assistant director is just so important that the choice of that person is critical to the movie.

To do that I try and keep myself in pretty good shape physically and I try to lead my life in such a way that I'll be able to be as strong at the end of the movie as I am in the beginning.

There are two things I will never do in my life. I will never climb Mount Everest, and I will never work with Val Kilmer again. There isn't enough money in the world.

There are so many effects and so many things that are done digitally now that it's so hard for the director to really control the process, because there are more and more experts that come in.

Then I usually leave the choice of the second assistant director and any other assistant directors to the first assistant director, who will choose because he or she is responsible for the conduct and the efficiency of the second assistant directors.

The importance of the assistant director cannot be overemphasized.

I think that you can't make a movie without a script. But you also can't make movies without actors. You also can't make movies without technicians. And there has to be just one person in charge of everybody, and to me that one person is the director.

The first thing I can really tell you is I really love the work.

You have to really work with someone who you think is going to be a collaborator, who you think understands what you want to do with this movie and how you want to do it.

The accolades usually come when you're dead or too old to get a job.

So I've had really great assistant directors for my last seven movies.

One of the other things I think that I've been able to do in my life, is to listen well.

One of the first lessons you learn as an actor is to listen.

It's very eclectic, the way one chooses subjects in the movie business, especially in the commercial movie business. You need to develop material yourself or material is presented to you as an assignment to direct.