Nobody has shot a strip club in black and white in a long time..

I was raised as a Calvinist, which is doctrine-driven. And though there are many things wrong with Calvinism, you are at least encouraged to argue ab….

I had this whole issue of doing a crime film in the 2010s. The genre's been mined very, very heavily. Post-Scorsese, post-Tarantino, post-Guy Ritchie….

Let's just shoot in black and white. Don't explain why. Have no reason for it. Just do it because it's interesting..

Because many of the films I've made have had an intellectualedge, it's harder for me to lie. It's harder for me to go to peoplewith money and say I d….

One of the things that I do like about filmmaking is that you find out how to solve new problems..

The only economic paradigm that movies have ever known is capitalism. There were no church sponsors or state patronage. The idea was that if you'd pa….

I get bored very easily. I find most movies boring. I go to movies and ask, "How do they stay awake making this?".

That's just my disposition - to create a situation where you have to come up with something..

I want to be happy; why do I do things that make me unhappy?.

There's no escape. I'm God's only man..

Don't ever let the viewer settle in and get ahead of you..

The secret of the creative life is how to feel at ease with your own embarrassment. We're all in the dirty laundry business and we're being paid to t….

I could be just a writer very easily. I am not a writer. I am a screenwriter, which is half a filmmaker... But it is not an art form, because screenp….

There's the generation that made the rules, the generation that codified them. The generation that broke them - that's mine. The generation that laug….

If you write interesting roles, you get interesting people to play them. If you write roles that are full of nuance and contradiction and have intere….

The clock is impotent; mechanical time does not affect those living in an eternal present..

Contradiction is the heart and soul of character and drama. You're always looking for it. I loved her so much I hit her; that's character. I loved he….

As screenwriters, we struggle with our own success. We have wallpapered our world and now we can't get anyone to notice the picture we just hung..

When you have people who are embarrassing themselves for a living, who are making themselves look foolish and vulnerable and emotional for a living, ….

I teach a course in screenwriting at Columbia, but I've never taken a course and I've never read a book about it!.