I Have Always Believed That There Is

No Studio In Hollywood Wanted 'cold Mountain.' None. No One Wanted 'ripley,' No One Wanted 'the English Patient.' That Tells You There Isn't Really An Appetite For Ambitious Movie-making Out There.

I Was One Of Five Very Clever Kids, The Other Kids Were Cleverer Than I Was And Still Are And Are Very Achieving. The Girls Were Always First At Everything And I Was Always 101st!

There's This Sense Of Being Strange, Which Is At The Heart Of Every Creative Person. Every Writer, Every Actor, Every Director Knows Who Ripley Is. We've Made Careers And Lives Out Of Pretending, Making Things Up, Inhabiting Other People's Stories And Lives. That's What I Do Every Day. . . . The Story Is So Audacious And Subversive: A Central Character Who Behaves Badly And Isn't Apparently Caught. That Intrigued Me No End.

I'm Interested In Stories Which Insist On A Dog Fails-to-eat-dog Kind Of World. I Hate Misanthropy, Want To Believe That There's A Possibility That We Might All Be Redeemed, That Hope Deferred Makes The Soul Sick, That Our Humanity Is Fragile, Funny, Common, Crazy, Full Of The Longing For Love, The Failure Of Love.

I Am A Writer Who Was Able To Direct The Films That I Write.