Films like 'The Godfather,' 'Chinatown' and 'The Exorcist' brought a realism and currency and understatement to their genres that we wanted for 'Mildred Pierce.'

Films like 'The Godfather,' 'The Exorcist,' 'Klute,' 'Chinatown,' 'Network,' and 'The Parallax View': They were drawn from the genre tradition, but they dressed down the stylistic telling of those traditions and genres.

I love how 'melodrama' is a denigrated term - a lower-class citizen to other genres. And yet that's what life is, man.

It took an entire generation of critical thinking for Douglas Sirk's films to be really appreciated.

I saw experimental film-makers teaching in college. They did what they wanted and didn't worry about the market, but the circumstances ended up offering me other possibilities.

The highest-caliber dramatic work produced for TV - not just in cable but something like 'The Good Wife' at network - is consistently great.