There comes a point in your moviegoing life where you look at the screen and then you look at the world and you ask 'What is going on?' You want the movies to show you the chaos and mess and risk and failure that are normal for a lot of us. Generally the movies hide all of that.

It is often difficult to watch yourself onscreen especially 60-feet high. As an actor it is an uncomfortable experience.

I'd done table reads for my own screenplays and I always thought they were so much fun. Why couldn't we do these for other classic screenplays and bring them to life? You can experience live theater where you get to see plays produced by different directors and different casts but there's really nothing like that for movie scripts.

With 'Good Will Hunting ' Miramax made certain the recruited audience wasn't expecting to laugh at Robin Williams like they normally do. From my limited experience you can really blow test screenings by conducting them in the wrong way.

I'm a good son a good father a good husband - I've been married to the same woman for 30 years. I'm a good friend. I finished college I have my education I donate money anonymously. So when people criticize the kind of characters that I play on screen I go 'You know that's part of history.'

I had never done anything with blue screen before or prosthetics or anything like that. Lord of the Rings was like stepping into a videogame for me. It was another world completely. But to be honest I basically did it so that I could have the ears. I thought they would really work with my bare head.Working with Martin Scorsese was an absolute minute-by-minute education without him ever being grandiose about it.

Screenplays I didn't really care about journalism travel books getting my writer friends to write about their dreams or something. I just determined to write the books I had to write.

Technology has a great advantage in that we are capable of creating dinosaurs and show them on the screen even though they are extinct 65 million years. All of a sudden we have a fantastic tool that is as good as dreams are.

There's a good deal in common between the mind's eye and the TV screen and though the TV set has all too often been the boobtube it could be it can be the box of dreams.

Women are not in love with me but with the picture of me on the screen. I am merely the canvas on which women paint their dreams.

There were IBM logos designed for the film and there were IBM design consultants working with Kubrick on the layout of the controls and computer screens.

It's certain that the death of an actor can be on a television screen playing the same thing every week.

Over the past 50 years we got versions of X-ray specs and space vacations and even death rays. But the X-ray specs don't fit on your face - they're big things that screen your luggage for guns. Space vacations are real but they cost $20 million. We have death rays but you have to be a triple Ph.D. to play with them.

Good music comes out of people playing together knowing what they want to do and going for it. You have to sweat over it and bug it to death. You can't do it by pushing buttons and watching a TV screen.

Sometimes airport security people recognize me. I'll go through the whole screening process and at the end they'll go 'Hey man I really like your work.' That's so cool.

Computers are scary. They're nightmares to fix lose our stuff and on occasion they crash producing the blue screen of death. Steve Jobs knew this. He knew that computers were bulky and hernia-inducing and Darth Vader black. He understood the value of declarative design.

I think we are at the very beginning of high changes not only in terms of digital film but in the way the movies will be screened whether they'll be screened on phones on computers - on everything.

What I was proud of was that I used very few parts to build a computer that could actually speak words on a screen and type words on a keyboard and run a programming language that could play games. And I did all this myself.

A wonderful thing about a book in contrast to a computer screen is that you can take it to bed with you.

Being a good television screenwriter requires an understanding of the way film accelerates the communication of words.

When characters change on screen it makes you feel better about yourself. You think 'Oh I change too I'm constantly becoming a better person.'

You need someone to tell you how to do things like hitting your marks or driving a car so it looks right or getting out of a car so it doesn't take a million years of screen time.

If a movie is really working you forget for two hours your Social Security number and where your car is parked. You are having a vicarious experience. You are identifying in one way or another with the people on the screen.

You sell a screenplay like you sell a car. If someone drives it off a cliff that's it.