I was shocked. They were going to give me money to make this really odd show? Well, I still had little thought of it going to series, but I thought it was great that my next short film was going to be paid for.

Since this was the first and only series I had ever produced, I was unaware of what the "Normal" environment was for a studio. I tried to run it as I did in my SF studio.

Anyone who knows me, knows I don't walk away from a commitment, but I had a commitment to myself. Yes, there were times Nickelodeon made it more difficult than it needed to be, but there were also times they made it easier.

I was shocked. They were going to give me money to make this really odd show? Well, I still had little thought of it going to series, but I thought it was great that my next short film was going to be paid for.

We're the real estate industry - not the manufacturers.

When I speak to students and they ask how much money you can make in art, as if that is a reason to persue it, I tell them to do something else.

Sometimes a serendipitous reaction occurs when a network asks you if you have any ideas for a series, at a time when your creative flow is working in that direction.

I do not feel any artist can produce great art without putting great personality into it. It is always a piece of you that goes on the screen or the canvass.

I am constantly getting letters from inconsistancies in the back stories of these characters.

Marriage should be a duet - when one sings, the other claps.

I think cheese smells funny, but I feel bananas "are" funny. I'm assuming Swamp told the whole story of the executives seriously asking us to replace the banana with cheese because they thought it was funnier.

Somebody said us artists have trouble with success because art is derived from struggle. I disagree with that, because truely doing your art is success, whether you make money from it or not.

The friend that I based Heffer on was adopted, and it all played into his total personality.

Sometimes things just click. The one contribution I tried to do, was shield the staff from the corporate politics that occur on any show. But yes, we all got along very well.

When an executive walked on our floor, it was at their own risk. As far as what others thought of working for me, I know I was very tough at times, and would storm down the hall after watching some bad animation from Korea. But overall, I feel we had a good time.

I had worked on dogs for a couple of years developing a renal transplant operation. We had dogs running around with kidneys we had transplanted back into themselves.

I have never personally seen a hand transplant that is more useful than a prosthesis.

I still have a vivid memory of my excitement when I first saw a chart of the periodic table of elements.

I think cheese smells funny, but I feel bananas 'are' funny. I'm assuming Swamp told the whole story of the executives seriously asking us to replace the banana with cheese because they thought it was funnier.

I was performing skin grafts and became interested in why skin wouldn't graft permanently.

Post-operatively the transplanted kidney functioned immediately with a dramatic improvement in the patient's renal and cardiopulmonary status.

Removal of an organ is difficult and dangerous. There have been several deaths of healthy donors. I think myself, I would be hesitant to participate as a liver donor. It's a very tricky operation.

Since this was the first and only series I had ever produced, I was unaware of what the 'Normal' environment was for a studio. I tried to run it as I did in my SF studio.

To the patient, any operation is momentous.

Two days prior to the Herrick operation I repaired a double cleft lip, resected a recurrent cancer of the mouth, corrected lop ears in a child, and closed a burn of the buttocks.

With Charles Woods, it was the first time I had ever seen tissue from a dead person used to save a human life. It piqued my curiosity.

Work is a prayer, and I start off every morning dedicating it to our Creator.

My best film composing experience was with Elia Kazan.

I was lucky enough to occasionally break out of that racist situation that prevails in the Hollywood film production community. But it was racist then and it will always be that way. It will never be otherwise.

'Batman' took 10 months to film, and by the time I stopped working on it, it took a long time before my English accent came out again. I was actually having to try for it.

Luck is everything... My good luck in life was to be a really frightened person. I'm fortunate to be a coward, to have a low threshold of fear, because a hero couldn't make a good suspense film.

I still feel that a movie has to attempt to say something - even if it fails miserably. But I've sort of given up on believing that I'm going to change the world with every film I choose to act in.

It's the difficulty we had with Mr. Bean, actually, when it went from TV to film. You certainly discover that you need to explain more about a character.

To make a documentary is one thing, to make a feature film is quite another.

I mean when the play was on in New York I was starting to get film offers coming through, and since the film's come out I get offered more than I used to, but it happens incrementally.

I think it would be very boring dramatically to have a film where everybody was a lawyer or doctor and had no faults. To me, the most important thing is to be truthful.

I like doing them and they're ridiculous and the actors can improvise a lot, and they don't have to be really realistic characters that hit a very specific tone as in a feature film. They're really fun, I want to make more of them definitely.

One of the most interesting aspects of the film project was collaborating with so many people - directors, filmmakers, and writers - over a five-year period. I learned that there are two components to this.

The best thing I can think of would be to create a union between something as beautiful and powerful and wonderful as Hollywood films and a criticism of the status quo. That's my dream, to make such a German film.

If he didn't fall in love he would have never come back near the end of the film. Because, what man is going to dishonor himself so that he comes back in front of the man that took a woman away from him... and warns her to save her life?

Robert Altman's Nashville is my all-time favorite film because it covers all the bases - it's original, moving, and has something to say, but also funny and incredibly entertaining.

I never see a novel as a film while I'm writing it. Mostly because novels and films are so different, and I'm such an internal novelist.

I have a movie coming out called Spun, which will be at the Toronto Film Fest.

Well ironically my last three roles have all been a mother. One was a Canadian film where the baby was taken away because she is a drug addict, in Irish Jam I play a mother to a four year old. I think in the future I'll be able to handle the role with a lot more depth.

And when you see it the first time you put the film together, the roughest cut, is when you want to go home and open up your veins and get in a warm tub and just go away. And then it gradually, maybe, works its way back, somewhere toward that spot you were at before.

A good film script should be able to do completely without dialogue.

My advice to young film-makers is this: don't follow trends, start them!

The whole aspect of cinema and film festivals should be a moment to come together and celebrate art and humanity. It would be a shame if there was such a divide.

It's really rare for film directors to be that interested in things other than themselves.