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Capra is an old-time movie craftsman, the master of every trick in the bag, and in many ways he is more at home with the medium than any other Hollywood director. But all of his details give the impression of contrived effect.

With every episodic, there's a learning curve where writers try to find the voice of the characters by way of the actors. Many details are found along the way. On 'Caprica,' although the franchise already existed, we were creating an entirely new world full of new characters.

The only other things, and again these things are hearsay, is that he could be pretty rough on directors, because he knew exactly the way he wanted to play the part. And he did so.

In the morning, Capra would arrive with twenty-or-so pages in which he'd written down all of his ideas. Most were terrible, then all of a sudden there would be one which was astounding.

Knowing that Gene and Morgan were playing those roles made it much easier to put the script together-we knew who we were writing it for. It took some mystery away.

Think of Frank Capra and Preston Sturges. They used the same actors over and over again.

The writer who can't do his job looks to his editor to do it for him, though he won't dream of sharing his royalties with that editor.

Some directors were brilliant in the silent era but never felt at home in sound. It's like a sculptor being forced to take up painting.

The last person they expected to connect with a screenplay was the comedic, blonde actress with the funny voice.

I don't think Capote loved Smith. But he did make a deep connection. It upset some people, because that had never been the approach to journalistic crime writing, to look into the mind of the killer.