People wear shorts to the Broadway theater. There should be a law against that.

I never go overbudget on my movies.

You gotta make the movie you want to make.

I`ve directed a film set in the `50s.

As a director, I also get to sit and watch actors and learn from them in a way that I don`t get to do when I`m just acting.

Big Night and The Impostors are both things that I wrote.

I mean, Scorsese`s a genius, and that`s one way of shooting.

The thing is, I`m a very practical filmmaker.

I like to use all of myself, and acting wasn`t doing that.

The majority of directors I`ve worked with didn`t know how to talk to actors.

So I went to SUNY. at Purchase, studied acting at the conservatory. Did some plays, later TV. Nothing unusual.

I`m always looking around for another play, but only for a short run. I did "Frankie and Johnnie in the Claire de Lune" onstage with Edie Falco for six months, and it was very hard. Once you get past 14 weeks, I go crazy.

So yes, I hope to act in other people`s movies, big and small, because that`s how I make my living, really.

I would rather just do the things I want to do.

I`m a control freak. Totally.

I make time to write.

I hope that a younger generation will start to watch a movie like this and start to better understand a slower pace in a truly cinematic way.

I`d read Up in the Old Hotel, and I wanted to do something with Mitchell`s stuff for a long time.

When I write a screenplay, and when I direct, I always pull lines out.

But usually I`ll wake up and start writing about nine o`clock. I`ll probably write for about three hours, and I`ll do that over the next month and a half.

I was dissatisfied just being an actor.

But I`d shot enough independent films as an actor, one as a director. I knew that you have to be very specific when you`re shooting a period picture.

And I love doing my own projects; that`s what I`ve always wanted to do.

I like to see how I can do it for less money.

I don`t like to move the camera that much anyway.

I write in the mornings. During my down time.

I`m actually one who will encourage directors to cut my lines.

Sometimes it`s difficult directing yourself on film because you can`t quite separate yourself from the subject.

Even The Impostors, as silly as it is, is a very intimate film, in a way.

I wanted to be an actor when I was a kid.

I`ve always considered myself an actor first and foremost.

I`m not saying they won`t be bigger projects someday.

I have consciously not taken the role of a gangster, which has been offered to me far too many times.

I love directing - it`s always so involving, so challenging.

I was always attracted to the past as a kid.

I didn`t know you had to change diapers so often. I couldn`t believe it - we must change them 10 times a day - each. So that`s 20 diapers a piece a day.

I`m not interested in wasting money on a project.

It`s more interesting because you get to research the history of the period, and all the different aesthetic elements that make a film, particularly this film, so stunning.

As a director you have to be careful you don`t over-design the film. You have to be careful that the period aspect does not take over.

Like Joseph Mitchell, I would scour the streets of New York and find little pieces of what other people think of as junk - and collect it.

My partner, Beth Alexander, and I want to produce smaller films, but commercially viable films that will enable me to make the kinds of movies I want to make.

The constraints of melodrama can be a great blessing, because they demand that all the characters involved - as absurd and extreme as they may initially seem - must stay utterly rooted in their own reality, or the whole project collapses.