“My big advice is do your homework. See what’s been made before you go make your film, not because you want to copy it. You need to understand the context in which you’re making something and what’s been done before. And even watching films...
“Something that really in retrospect gave me a breakthrough was writing for an anthology. This publisher said, well, do you have a book? And I’m like, yeah, yeah, I have a book. So they said, we’d like to see it. The anthologies can really sort of...
“Well, the best I can say is create inventory. Don’t think that the first thing that you do is precious….don’t harbor the illusion that that is going to be the thing… to send you into the stratosphere. Don’t try to second guess...
“Michael Eisner, who is my mentor said, “If you want to have a happy life, be a mentor and have a mentor.” And I would always find kids younger than me or older than me and try to help them along. It’s a virtuous circle, which is an old Greek...
“What I say to almost everyone is the same thing: you have to take your time. You can’t rush. You know, I got a lot of advice from my dad, and he would tell me this one thing. He’d say, “It takes about three to five years to write a good book....