Burroughs was never really that pleased with the way popular culture and society treated his character. He tried to make a few movies of his own as a result, but they weren't very good.

First, speaking for myself, I don't want to ever be in a position where I'm telling other directors how to make movies, because I don't think it's any of my business.

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.

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

When we were doing 'Freaks and Geeks', I didn't quite understand how movies and TV worked, and I would improvise even if the camera wasn't on me. I thought I was helping the other actors by keeping them on their toes, but nobody appreciated it when I would trip them up. So I was improvising a little bit back then, but not in a productive way.

I worked very hard on those movies but there was some creative connection that wasn't being made.

I didn't have any ambition to produce big mainstream popcorn movies.

I love European movies and I kind of grew up on European films.

So, yes, there's nothing I love more than listening to directors talk about their movies.

I don't know if I see myself as really an action hero, but I like doing physical movies and I like doing movies where the writing is very lean.

I've always had this idea that I wanted movies to make people better not worse.

The movies I made when I was 14 or 15, I have a hard time looking at those. Those were the awkward years. I don't know if anybody can look at something they did when they were 14 and not wince.

I think what a lot of action movies lose these days, especially the ones that deal with fantasy, is you stop caring at some point because you've lost human scale.

With the CGI, suddenly there's a thousand enemies instead of six - the army goes off into the horizon. You don't need that. The audience loses its relationship with the threat on the screen. That's something that's consistently happening and it makes these movies like video games and that's a soulless enterprise. It's all kinetics without emotion.

Movies have influenced all writers, not just thriller writers.