“If anyone would have been paying serious attention to my puppet shows, I would have been sent to therapy very young.”

Oh, I was completely hooked on movies and plays and theater from the time I was a day old; I was very, very early on in love with movies and I loved plays.

I’m from the Midwest, and I loved my family. I had a very good time as a child, but I was also – I have a theory about Jews growing up in the Midwest, that there is an ultimately sort of wonderful avoidance of a lot of things, and a great acceptance of whatever is happening.

I was very much in my room with my marionette stage, you know, creating these incredibly boring things that I felt were so fascinating, and forcing my relatives to come, and charging money for them to see my little productions.

The difference between a friend and an acquaintance is that a friend helps; an acquaintance merely advises.

I have a 92 year old father whose doing beautifully who lives in Chicago and a sister and a nephew and a niece and I love coming back and try to do so fairly often.

And I think being a good director is being able to be completely tyrannical and you?ve got to be an absolute dictator while at the same time, you have to listen and see everything because it can all change on a dime.

I’ve directed a fair amount of television series – so I’m always trying to learn new things.

I loved being in Close Encounters, just to watch Steven Spielberg working was exciting.

Yes I try to do everything I can not to fail hideously.

My voice dropped when I was 14. And when I was 14, I might have weighed 75 pounds. So you can imagine how strange that must have been: like James Earl Jones speaking through a sock puppet.