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I guess 'The Player' was a pretty good L.A. movie. And 'Chinatown.' Was there ever a better L.A. movie about a certain period in L.A.? That was terrific.

Chinatown is tremendously interesting... It's a part of the city that hasn't really been explored in crime literature or in any general literature. It's as though Chinatown didn't exist. People write about New York without mentioning Chinatown at all.

My God, there are so many mediocre screenplays out there.

The trouble with that movie is that you had to see Chinatown the day before you saw The Two Jakes.

In terms of popular cinema, 'One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest' is as near perfection as I can think of.

And Shanghai is amazing. I'm a fan of science fiction so when you're there in the night with all the lights and all this modernity, it's like a set in a movie.

Generally, screenplays suck.

'Memoirs of a Geisha' is everything you'd expect it to be: beautiful, mesmerizing, tasteful, Japanese. It's just not very hot.

A lot of our favorite comedies in general are usually directed by writers, whether or not they wrote the original script themselves.

'The Princess Bride' is by far the most popular film I've ever done. I don't think I'll ever top it.