Documentaries have always inspired me in narrative filmmaking.

But I remember feeling as a producer I felt like the guy who called the caterer and got the band; I had to work the party while everybody else was having a good time.

On every movie I've done as a director, I look at the producers and having done it, I don't envy them, at all.

In the '80s, I can't say that Amy and I were aware of an independent film community. We could only get a certain amount of money for our pictures, which made them low budget movies, but they were distributed through studios.

As a director, I've been able to combine with what I've learned as an actor and as a producer: it melds quite nicely into what I feel like I should have been doing all along.

Every movie is wildly different. So many of the problems are the same, but they take on different guises.

I've always been schizophrenic; I've never been interested in limiting myself.

I'm in five guilds; that's a lot of dues to pay. So I have to keep on working.

And I like being able to go back and forth, and I don't really care if it's a small budget or big budget or studio or independent, as long as it's got a story that's compelling and there's enough money to make the picture.

But at the same time, never having final cut before, I really learned an interesting thing for any studio executive who is reading this: that if a director has final cut, it's actually easier and more interesting to listen to notes.

It struck me that working digitally with a small crew, I could lay out a general plan for Famous and hope for mistakes which would create something more than satire and something less than truthful reality.

I only got to be able to act, because I gave myself a job as a producer.

My hunger and desperation, being an actor, an out of work actor - my memory of that is as fresh as an open wound.

I met Steve McQueen once. Well, met isn't really the right word.

I'm being told it saves money to shoot in Toronto, because of tax benefits, the crews are cheaper, but what I save in the bottom line, I lose in a million other ways.

New York means so much to people. If you're inclined to leave the nest, New York is where most people think they have to go, and it's been that way since the first skyscraper.

I came to New York to be an actor and I became a film producer first.

I think we were the first picture to cut on Final Cut Pro. So we were the guinea pigs, because we got a deal on the system. But with that comes all sorts of technological problems I couldn't begin to describe.

If movies are set in New York, they really should be shot in New York.

Although there was a screenplay, the actors never knew what questions I was going to ask them, and all of my character's voice-over narration and scenes were added after the fact.

I produced six movies with Amy Robinson since the very early '80s.

Documentaries have always inspired me in narrative filmmaking.

Canadian writers don't live in gated mansions; you can just talk to them when you see them lining up at the Second Cup.

Everybody wants to go to heaven, but nobody wants to die.

Spirit is a band I really love.

I never thought of losing, but now that it' s happened, the only thing is to do it right. That's my obligation to all the people who believe in me. We all have to take defeats in life.

Economics is a subject that does not greatly respect ones wishes.

One of the trademarks of a champion is that he can outlast you.

I'm not a rubber stamp, and people know that. If you can convince me of the merits, you will have my vote every time.

A genuinely democratic Iraq might well act as a fresh spur.

It is funny the two things most men are proudest of is the thing that any man can do and doing does in the same way, that is being drunk and being the father of their son.

We broke up mostly because we didnt have a manager and everyone was on different drugs. I dont take them so it was a bit weird for me.

When someone beats a rug, the blows are not against the rug, but against the dust in it.

Unless you're the director on the movie, or putting up the money for the movie, you really don't have a lot of control.

I've looked that old scoundrel death in the eye many times but this time I think he has me on the ropes.

A noble person is mindful and thankful for the favors he receives from others.

Hope, insofar as it is hope of resurrection, is the living contradiction of what it proceeds from and what is placed under the sign of the Cross and death.

I go about in the world - free, busy, happy. Among people, I have no time to think of myself.

Almost everything in leadership comes back to relationships.

To believe the ridiculous requires the strictest logic.

The world belongs to people with IQs of 120. Anything much greater or less amounts to a liability.

A benevolent mind, and the face assumes the patterns of benevolence. An evil mind, then an evil face.

Write every day; never give up; it's supposed to be difficult; try to find some pleasure and reward in the act of writing, because you can't look for praise from editors, readers, or critics. In other words, tips that are much easier to give than to take.

'The Last Five Years' was a musical in 2002, and it's a deconstruction of a marriage.

We suspect Dr. Clutterbuck's sense of hearing must be injured: for him the 'ear trumpet' magnifies but distorts sound, rendering it less distinct than before.

Even in my despair I knew in a vague way that the Bible held hope for me in its pages. I just didnt know where to begin.