Writer

Somebody might say that they always wanted to be a fly-fishing guide in Montana and maybe they'll never get to do that but just by the virtue of having said it out loud, I think there's some power in that.

A corporation that is publicly traded, it has one goal: to make money. It doesn't have a soul. If it does have a soul, it comes from the people who run it.

When you are older, you want to be around people you admire, even in their personal lives.

How many superhero movies can we have? It seems like there are 19 a week. They're making money, though, and people are going to see them. So, I get it. I understand completely.

I think that, anybody with a strong will to tell a story, then that is fantastic. I think it's fantastic. I think sometimes people have what I'll call an ulterior motive with a story.

Many years ago, I was a producer on a movie called 'My Dog Skip.' Willie Morris, the great southern writer, had written the book. We had adapted it and taken 17 years of his life and compressed it into one year.

You pick a project. You think, 'I can succeed at this. I can help them. I can make it so that they'll want to call me again the next time.'

You set out to tell a good story. You don't do it because there is a deep message involved, because the movie is almost always bad when you do that. Your job No. 1 is for it to be entertaining, and if it's inspiring, that is great, too.

Every director knows it is his job to be manipulative. When you make an edit, you are trying to manipulate.

'Snow White and the Huntsman' was - I came in before they started shooting and basically worked on Charlize Theron's character for the most part. I guess I probably worked four or five weeks on that one and stayed during production a little bit with them.

For every one that gets made, there are five other movies that you try to get made that you don't.

Christian audiences, I think, have grown very tired of movies that try to pander to them.

If America had a motto, it would be pull yourself up by the bootstraps, work harder than the next guy, have a goal and achieve it.

I really don't storyboard unless it's an action sequence of some kind, but I plan carefully.

We did not go to that many movies in a theater in the little town I grew up in.

Every time you do a true story - and I've done a few - you have to look in the mirror and say, 'That's close enough. I'm comfortable with this.' You're always going to compress time; you're going to change the order of things. But I don't think you want to tell a big lie. You want to think that you're embracing the truth.