Most people with whom I talk, often quite educated, think the military is made up of knife-between-the-teeth grunts, uneducated robots without any kind of free will whatsoever - people who goose step to Republican philosophy and particularly the Bush cowboy mentality.

The United States military is probably the most socialistic institution in the United States.

In my mind, I'm no longer daunted by the idea of a remake. In fact, I now look at it as a genre unto itself - so long as you make it your own.

'Commander in Chief' became a show not about why we should have a woman president but why we should not have a woman president.

The truth is that when a man has a child, and it's a girl, and he doesn't change as a man, he's not much of a man.

I think our nation cannot stomach the notion of a woman in sexual terms whatsoever: that we are so puritanical that we cannot dismiss the notion of sex from our minds when it comes to women.

We make movies to endorse our own personal feelings. I am not, in fact, a documentary filmmaker. I've got my personal beliefs, and I'm ready to put them out on the table.

Hollywood is enamored of the 20- to 30-year-old actress, but by the very nature of the life experience of the character, the roles cannot be that rich. You can only have Angelina Jolie in a mental hospital so many times.

The freer a society becomes, the freer its arts can flourish and be exported.

It's very exciting to continue to work at DreamWorks.

People tend to forget about nuclear weapons. We think they are going to remain in silos for the rest of time. As long as they exist, they are going to be used.

The way that one feels about the story line of 'Deterrence' can tell us, I believe, about each person's conservatism or liberalism and precisely how tolerant he or she is of racism.

Marc Frydman and I are overwhelmed by the confidence Touchstone Television has shown in us, and we're thrilled to continue trying to knock 'em out of the park.

Sometimes, anonymous sources, when merely stating opinions or running a smear campaign, are certainly cowards.

I thought I'd give myself 10 years as an entertainment journalist and build up so much clout that there was no way Hollywood could ignore me when I started delivering scripts. Little did I know they were very good at ignoring it.

We are viewed by the world as a quasi-racist state in which we allow natural disasters to obliterate our minority community, in which our penal system is designed to treat blacks unfairly, and in which we let the medical and educational systems in our ghettos fester to the level of some third-world countries.

What actor doesn't want to walk around a set and be called 'Mr. President?' Playing POTUS is a kind of rite of passage among American actors - our version of playing Hamlet.

As for Kate Bosworth, I've always admired her. I watched her in a movie called 'Girl in the Park,' which has never been released - not even on DVD. I had a copy, and it was bravura acting I had not seen from her.

I admire how Tarantino finds music that's semifamiliar and not famous: undiscovered gems.

Some nights I lie awake at night thinking, 'What's going to stop someone from smashing a chair through my window and coming in the house at two in the morning?' It is very unnerving. It's a realistic scare, which is the worst kind of scare that you could have.

I shot part of 'Resurrecting the Champ' in Denver, and I spent a summer going to survival school in Colorado Springs.

When I was a kid, my heroes were not baseball players nor movie stars. My knights in shining armor were film critics.

My mom is an exceptionally wise and kind person.

I do have this belief that we all have a chance to be great, beautiful people based on how we are raised and our surroundings.

What makes a man is when you go against your own instincts to do to the right thing.

I often found that my favorite scene that I shoot is often one that I cut out, like in 'The Last Castle' and 'The Contender.' If you look at the deleted scenes, some of the best scenes never made it into the film.

I came to the conviction that film criticism, in and of itself, was an art.

I am a liberal. I have always been a liberal.

The First Amendment is the First Amendment for a reason - our most cherished right. But it often creates muddy and uncomfortable situations, ones that are the source of great drama and national self-reflection.

Somebody - and I'm going to guess it was Hitchcock - once said that everyone has their reasons. If you remember that, as a writer, you'll write better than average villains.

It's not such a bad thing to bring some naive optimism to Washington.

The truth is that we're not remaking Sam Peckinpah's 'Straw Dogs,' we're making 'Straw Dogs.' We're taking this story, and we're putting our own spin on it. The mere fact that I have James Marsden in it is an indication that it's a very different film than the one that had Dustin Hoffman in it.

I look at 'Straw Dogs' as a very imperfect movie. It's a little bit slow, and its themes are a little bit murky.

When you do a freeze frame, you have the opportunity to find the exact shot that you want - no guessing.

I have to admit that all of us creatively involved with 'Commander' absolutely intended to put the term 'Madam President' into the zeitgeist. I can't deny it.

I think people were a little premature in writing off violent movies. They're going to continue being made, and audiences will continue going to see them.

I'll tell you this: you can look at all the masculine toughies you want - the Ben Roethlisbergers, the Russell Crowes, the David Petraeuses - but if you want to look at what a man should be - persevering, honest, a person who manifests his intellect into action - you need look no further than Roger Ebert.

Classically, throughout all of our history, the movies in times of crisis have turned to military figures as heroes, because they are the guardians of our nation.

The common denominator of the great women leaders in the world - Indira Gandhi, Margaret Thatcher, Golda Meir - is that they're dramatically nonsexual.

You will never - and I mean never - be able to figure out if I was an Obama guy or a Hillary guy.

I still viewed myself as a reviewer when I was on radio. Was it appropriate for me? I think the answer is it's only inappropriate if I allowed it to affect my film reviewing. I don't think you will find any studio that said, 'Yeah, he went easy on us because he was shopping a script.'

Trump is the opposite of everything Reagan was.

When you make a movie like 'Straw Dogs,' your goal is to have people's eyes remain glued to the screen. It serves you no purpose to turn away from the screen.

There was scarcely a month during 1988 when Thomas Harris' novel, 'The Silence Of The Lambs,' was not on or around the top of the 'New York Times' list of America's bestselling books.

I met Joan Allen at an L.A. Film Critics Awards' dinner, and I said, 'I want to write a movie for you.'

I can be accused of being acerbic as a critic and writer.

Every weekend from, like, 1974 to 1978, I'd trudge over to the Greenwich library, which gathered up almost every major newspaper in the country. I would sit there all day long and read and read and read the reviews. I remember being twelve or thirteen and writing to Judith Crist, Pauline Kael, and Roger Ebert.

Just because the boogeyman of the Soviet Union doesn't exist anymore, it doesn't mean the world is living angelically.

I think that 'Straw Dogs' as a story is eminently re-makable. It can be modernized and Americanized without a problem and without giving up any artistic integrity.

If I have to answer one more time, 'Why did you want to remake 'Straw Dogs?'' with the emphasis on the word 'why,' I'm going to flip out.