Generally, screenplays suck.

I'm very superstitious.

I didn't want to be 50 or 60 and auditioning for a three-line role.

'The Ides of March' was a fairly cynical film.

We usually break the story first. For instance, on The Monuments Men, and this one is more complicated because there's a lot of history, so before we started, we sat down with Robert Edsel, the author of the book, for about a week, and basically, he just gave us a lecture and went through everything. And then, I had a researcher, somebody who we had actually used on Argo.

A lot of the art that was destroyed was painted and created by Jews. A lot of that is gone because that was degenerative art. That's what Hitler was trying to get rid of.

You really have to get out of an actor's head to write because actors only care about their part and it revolves around their part so "This is the important part because this is the part where..." .

As a writer, you know what the purpose of the scene is. It really has nothing to do with the actor so you have to really get out of that space because for actors it's a micro-focus and then you figure out your arc through what the writers have given you to say. But that arc is just one little piece of the huge arc of the whole film. It took a while to get out of that.

That's like a word in the dictionary now. It doesn't surprise me, but it makes me kinda sad. And it makes me a little frightened.

A film like 'Good Night And Good Luck,' you make that for $7 million because you know it's a black-and-white film, and it's not an easy sell. If you make it for $7 million, then everybody can have a chance to make a little bit of money, and you get to make the film you want to make.