Quotes from Barry Levinson

Now, a lot of people didn't know him at all - it went through feeder funds, so they wouldn't even have known anything about Bernie Madoff. But everybody finds a justification for their behavior, and obviously, Bernie had a half dozen justifications in his own mind.

You need to be open and explore while heading where you want to go. You can never be too in love with your own ideas. If you can remember every idea that is yours in a script, as opposed to someone else's, then something is wrong.

It's those moments, those odd moments that you look for and sometimes by creating this kind of loose atmosphere you find those little moments that somehow mean a lot to an audience when they really register right.

Writing by committee becomes much less about a vision. It is really about a piece of merchandise.

Writing with a partner is, in some ways, an easy but odd process. Two people come into a room and look to each other for motivation. One might not be in the right mood at any given moment. And somehow, you begin; somehow, out of your exchange of thoughts, something engages both of you, and the process of collaboration begins.

All I try to do is create an atmosphere that seems comfortable enough, that it removes tension and everyone feels free. If they feel free then behaviour happens, small moments happen and that's what ultimately works the best for me.

It gets harder and harder to make movies about human beings. These movies are like an endangered species. Everything is 'simplify, simplify' now. How many movies have sub-plots anymore?

You can never squash something and assume it's not going to come back in some fashion. It's going to bubble up until it explodes. Society evolves to find a better way.

Craig Nelson who is an actor and is in a show called Coach in the United States. We began to do some improvisational stuff and we used to get laughs and things.

I worked at a local television station and I got a chance to direct and do all those things - worked kiddie shows, Ranger House show with the hand puppets and things like that.

I got a chance to work with Mel Brooks on two of his films: Silent Movie and High Anxiety.

I think certain movies work and that is part of the magic of it all. We can't truly define why something succeeds.

I got involved with an acting school and studied for a couple years. They used to have improv exercises that you would work on and you would do improvs.

When I began to think about the head of the family, the storyteller, the rise of television which became the new storyteller, the break-up of the American family as an idea and then Avalon came.

I play around with human things, human relationships and that, and allow that kind of talk to work in that way, on that level.

The interesting thing about movies, it's not always - y'know, you have to have structure etc and all those things, but an audience responds, in many ways, we walk away and certain things stay in our heads that are memorable.

Some stories seem to lend themselves to telling right away. 'All The President's Men' was done, what, four or five years after the event? It certainly seemed to work there, as opposed to something that happened 40 years ago.

First of all, just to get Diner made would have been an achievement in that I got a chance to direct.

You have to do a version of somebody that's the essence of Paterno. I think that's what Al is so great at. You have to create a man, a life, and the emotions that go with it. He's truly brilliant.