Some actors occasionally waive their outlandish salaries and take a cut of the gross instead.
Owen Wilson is an actor, but think of him as a sort of secret agent. He has an offbeat, indie-movie sensibility. Every so often, however, he infiltrates some big-budget movie he clearly doesn't belong in - 'Anaconda,' 'Armageddon,' 'The Haunting' - and struggles valiantly to stop it from sucking.
When salaries skyrocket, budgets skyrocket, and then rigor mortis sets in: moviemakers turn out formulaic junk in an effort to hedge their bets.
By now, we all know that Hollywood producers always chase after the same properties, that the sharks circle simply because the other sharks are circling.
Leaving New York and friends is tough, and there are things about it I still really miss. But Montana is a great place to write.
'White Teeth' has far too many characters, and its plot is tortured. But Smith has an astonishing intellect. She writes sharp dialogue for every age and race - and she's funny as hell.
Authors all have at least one thing in common, which is that when we finally get finished copies of our books, we get giddy as kindergartners. We touch them constantly, and build towers with them, and take pictures of our cats and dogs reading them.
Tobias Wolff is a hell of a writer, but you knew that already. His first memoir, 'This Boy's Life,' was a Huck Finn story set in the Eisenhower era - a story so rich and wounding that not even Hollywood could make a bad movie out of it.
It has taken Thomas Harris 11 years to publish the sequel to 'The Silence of the Lambs,' which suggests that while everyone was desperate to read it, he was not desperate to write it.
Independent booksellers tend to have good taste and big mouths.
Asking the director of 'The Lord of the Rings' to read my novel was exactly as terrifying as you'd think. I came this close to not doing it because I was so embarrassed. But he was so gracious about it.
I'd been wanting to try a YA novel for years because I saw how exciting the genre was and how amazing, hungry, and curious the readers were.
The conventional wisdom is that authors get only one chance in this world. If your first novel doesn't sell, publishers and bookstores lose interest, and your career stalls, barring an act of God or Oprah.
I know Peter Jackson a tiny-tiny bit from interviewing him about the 'Lord of the Rings' movies over the years. When I was visiting the set of 'The Return of the King,' he let me be an extra so I could see filmmaking from a different perspective. I was a Rohan soldier.
'Bottle Rocket' is an underdog.
My father-in-law lives in Montana, and we would come here every summer.
It's been said that Generation X should get a life. Well, in 'Bottle Rocket,' they get a life of crime. Or at least try.
Tim Burton's 'Sleepy Hollow' has got to be the most gorgeous, sumptuous, painterly movie ever made about multiple decapitations.
I didn't want to write a pure fantasy novel, though I love those and grew up on J. R. R. Tolkien and Ursula LeGuin.
I'm definitely interested in two questions: 'Is anybody ever really irredeemable?' and 'How much are we all prepared to do for each other?'
