The film project has been “twenty years of constipation,” and he likens the Hollywood process to “trying to grill a steak by having a succession of people coming into the room and breathing on it.”

Stereotypes, they're sensual, cultural weapons. That's the way that we attack people. At an artistic level, stereotypes are terrible writing.

Film’s thought of as a director’s medium because the director creates the end product that appears on the screen. It’s that stupid auteur theory again, that the director is the author of the film. But what does the director shoot-the telephone book? Writers became much more important when sound came in, but they’ve had to put up a valiant fight to get the credit they deserve.

The cannabis experience has greatly improved my appreciation for art, a subject which I had never much appreciated before.

The challenge of screenwriting is to say much in little and then take half of that little out and still preserve an effect of leisure and natural movement

For me, writing stories is one way of feeling connected to the universe and God.