I write screenplays that don't get made and pilots that don't get picked up, and I re-write other people's movies, and those are all different kinds of fees.

What makes me laugh? Richard Nixon always made me laugh.

Generally with the Oscars or the Emmys there isn't much you can do until the nominations are announced. Then you know what kind of year you're dealing with - what's been overlooked, what the issues are.

They make a humongous profit, but the people that work on the shows don't get paid a lot because they're working on the Oscars show. It's the biggest show in the world.

Eddie Izzard is absolutely brilliant. I would love to write something for him.

It's the biggest party in the world, and you have to keep the whole thing percolating, which is difficult because a lot of awards most people don't care about.

I mean, I've sold all these scripts and nothing's been made. Studios have closed, stars have died. I had a director find Jesus. And the pictures just don't get made.

I write screenplays that don't get made and pilots that don't get picked up, and I re-write other people's movies, and those are all different kinds of fees.

I do a lot of screen re-writing.

It's really live television, the way God meant it to be.

I mean, when I started out I was billing per hour, like a shrink because you would sit with somebody and work. But most of it, if it's for a live show it's usually a buy-out. A flat fee.

I've written about 15 screenplays and they all sold - they were all sold on pitches.

As I'm always fond of telling hosts at the Oscars who are doing it for their first time, for everybody who wins, there are four people who don't. As the evening wears on, the room fills up with losers, and then they are bitter.

Every single line on the Oscar show is negotiated. Unless you've been there, you have no idea how it is put together. It's like nothing else on earth. I'm writing a book about it, but I have to throw in my sexual escapades to make sure it sells.

For years, I was compared to Wookiees, especially after I did the 'Star Wars Holiday Special.' I have some photos of me with a few of the Wookiees on the set, and it's hard to tell us apart.

I have one rave 'New York Times' review framed next to a flop 'Los Angeles Times' review. And it's for the same show. These people watched the same show. That's what happens. They love it, they hate it.

I think I intimidate hecklers because I weigh more than most of them.

I've got more chins than a San Francisco phonebook.

I've learned that most of gay America is coupled up, or looking to be. No wonder gay marriage has such traction. So many of us are already in it, so of course we want the legal benefits.

Musicals have clearly gotten more physical. You never saw Ethel Merman doing step aerobics.

My assistant says I'm an eBay auction waiting to happen. I have a very large collection of T-shirts... about 4,000 now. Maybe I'll pillage it someday. I have resisted the offers to do a line of T-shirts.

My skirt fell off on stage during a performance of Hairspray on Broadway, revealing my fat suit over my own natural fat suit. I turned to the audience and said, 'Now you know why I spent six years in a square.'

Of course I adored and wanted to be Catwoman. That goes without saying.

The Oscars are about the dynamics of that moment, of that season. It reflects what's been going on in the world every year through the movies. And a lot of times, what's popular at the movies is popular because of what's going on in the world at that moment.

When AIDS hit, lots of people banded together to take care of each other and do what the government wasn't doing. When you grow up Jewish, as I have, you learn that everybody hates you, no one's going to help you, and you have to take care of yourself. That's a great maxim to the gay community, and we took it to heart; we took care of our own.

Who knew we had all this O.C.D. in the world? Well actually, I suppose it's pretty obvious. It explains Sudoku, doesn't it?

We're gonna try and bring on all the different aspects of horror movie making and bring on guests and show all these old '50's B movies. Not the real corny ones, the real cool ones.

The thing is there have been American movies that are similar to Solaris, like Alien had a lot of things that are similar, although it's also got the horror element.

My mom took me to see Carnal Knowledge and The Wild Bunch and all these kind of movies when I was a kid.

Awards were made in Hollywood, in whatever the time it was created. They're to promote each other's movies. You give me an award, I give you an award and people will believe that we are great movies and they'll go to see them. It's still the same.

In a theater, the part is mine and I can control it as I want to. In the movies, I don't have direct contact, and I am fighting technical machinery.

I couldn't be happier about being a part of 'Hunger Games' and to play Katniss. I have a huge responsibility to the fans of this incredible book and I don't take it lightly. I will give everything I have to these movies and to this role to make it worthy of Suzanne Collins' masterpiece.

I enjoy about 1 out of 100 movies, it's about the same proportion to books published that I care to read.

Sure, 'Twilight' is really huge right now and everybody's freaking out over it, but it will go away soon and I will be back to doing what I'm used to doing: weird little movies that nobody sees.

There are many kinds of movies in Hong Kong. Some are commercial and others are more artistic.

Making movies is eating candy. It's a very expensive candy, so you value when you can do it. So when you can do it twice at once, it's like, you know, a kid in a candy store!

It just proves good movies don't need 100 million dollars to be good.

In the past I've made movies that were pretty universally liked. You can't really hate them. You can discard them, but you can't really hate them.

I grew up wanting to make movies, and along the way I suddenly found that I had a career doing comedy.

When I go to movies I generally want to be taken to another world.

There were not fifteen people in the story department and twenty-five producers and stuff. And Roger had produced 1,000 movies and directed a couple of hundred, and their comments were always very, very specific.

You can make movies for a select audience, but you have to market it to them.You can make movies for a select audience, but you have to market it to them.

Well, it was actually - I brought the idea of doing a documentary to HBO back in 2000, when there were some press reports sort of were bandied about that there were going to TV movies based on some of the books that were out.

I don't think any actor feels comfortable watching themselves in movies. You must be very narcissistic. The problem with your own opinion of yourself is that contrary to the normal spectators, when you watch a film you are in, you only watch yourself.

Racing Stripes was so much fun to do. It's one of the funniest movies I've seen in a couple years.

I think the audience would like to see movies that are stunning to watch. I really think they'd like to see spectacles.

I feel like I'm a fighter. I've fought my whole life to get to where I'm at. I like fight movies. When someone gets knocked down, I like to root for him to succeed.

After the war, there was no industry. We lost the war. We had our whole city destroyed. No money. No studio. No film. No camera. No equipment. We would shoot in the street. We had no actors. Nothing. But we wanted to do movies. And we did the best movies in the world.

Star Wars, the original movie, was all the various old genre of pictures: the swashbucklers, the war movies, all those things were put n there in a different look.