I'd rather entrust the government of the United States to the first 400 people listed in the Boston telephone directory than to the faculty of Harvard University.

The stories that I want to tell especially as a director don't necessarily have a perfect ending because the older you get the more you appreciate a good day versus a happy ending. You understand that life continues on the next day the reality of things is what happens tomorrow.

I've run into some S.O.B. directors but I gave them back as good as I got.

I've turned down jobs because I've said 'Honestly I can't find my way in. I can't do it. I love you as a director. I think the script is good. You deserve better than I think I can do.'

In feature films the director is God in documentary films God is the director.

I watched a lot of silent directors who were absolutely great like John Ford and Fritz Lang Tod Browning and also some very modern directors like The Coen Brothers. The directors take the freedom within their own movies to be melodramatic or funny when they chose to be. They do whatever they want and they don't care about the genre.

It's interesting - I always thought when I was doing more melodramatic stuff like 'Everwood' that the directors were constantly reeling me in and stopping me from being funny.

'Dirty Rotten Scoundrels' is a good one because it not only turned out I think to be a really funny movie but it was also a delight to shoot. We were in the South of France working with Glenne Headly and Michael Caine and Frank Oz the director - who were just fun.

It became very clear to the director that it would be foolish not to use our friendship. I had tried to talk to him about it because all the relationships in the film are so not negative but antagonistic. There's not a lot of love going around.

I've never let producers tell me what to do. Even when I was making television I always did what I wanted to do and if I couldn't I didn't do it. It was a freedom that these days young directors starting out don't have.