ROB REINER

I've made movies that nobody saw initially, and then, all the sudden, people over the years pick up on it. Like 'Spinal Tap' and 'Princess Bride.'

People can be ignorant and still have loving, human qualities.

Something is wrong here, and it's more than easy access to guns or violence on TV. It's about lack of love and attachment to loving people early in life.

I think it is over-rated. Whenever I go to an Italian restaurant, I never get the tiramisu.

When I was doing 'All in the Family,' half the time, I was looking at where the cameras were, where were the other actors in the scene, what the audience was doing.

The reason they don't make movies for adults and for people which are the largest bulge of the population is because they are not usually going to the movie the first weekend. They take a while to learn about it, probably word of mouth. It takes a lot of money to release a picture.

I remember once, years ago, I met Sting, and he told me that he had seen 'Spinal Tap' 50 times. He said: 'Every time I watch it, I don't know whether to laugh or cry.'

We made the joke when we screened 'Bucket List' that there was 100% desire to see amongst our demographic with a 40% ability to get them to see it.

I saw 'The Grand Budapest Hotel.' I liked it. I saw 'The Fault in Our Stars,' and I could see why young girls like it. But it dropped off like crazy in the second weekend. I liked 'Fed Up' - I love documentaries. I go to a lot of documentaries.

If I know a guy who's a really good improvisational actor, I'd be foolish not to let him because he'll come up with goodies and all kinds of little freebies that you get.

I think Jews are the smartest people in the world.

It's the only way I really know how to tell the story is to be able to kind of live through the characters. So when I find something that resonates with me, it's usually because it cuts to something very real inside of me; something that I've gone through or experienced.

I'd never ask an actor to do something I couldn't do - not that I'm the best actor in the world - but if I can do it, then I know that anyone I hire can do these things.

They always say girls mature faster than boys, but I don't think that's true because I think girls just are more mature than boys. We're always trying to catch up to them.

The first time I ever met Stephen King, he came up to me, and we went to shake hands, and he had, like, this fake rubber rat that he kind of, you know, shook at me. You know, and I said, 'No, this is a cliche - this can't be. Stephen King is trying to scare me with a fake rat?' It was just really weird.

I actually love Stephen King's writing. I mean, we, actually, at Castle Rock, we've made seven movies out of Stephen King books.

I know how sobering and exhausting parenthood is. But the reality is that our children's future depends on us as parents. Because we know that the first years truly last forever.

There's not one film that I've ever made that could get made today by a studio, not one - even 'A Few Good Men' because it's an adult courtroom drama, and studios do not make them any more. And so every movie that I make, have made and will make is always going be independently financed.

The marketing costs are insane now. So even if you've got a picture like 'Flipped' which cost under $14 million, or $13.5 million, you're still going to spend on an national basis, if you release with a good national release, you're still going to spend, you know, $30-$40 million.

They make three types of movies, and if you don't make one of those three, you have to find independent financing: It's either big-action superhero tent-pole thing, or it's an animated film, or it's an R-rated, raunchy sex comedy. They don't make movies about real people.

You - I don't think anybody ever forgets the first person they fell in love with. That's something that everybody remembers, and it doesn't matter what the time period is or where; I mean, those feelings are always the same.

As far as getting my start, it was really Norman Lear, even aside from being on 'All in the Family.' He helped me get my start as a director. He was the one who said, 'Let him do 'Spinal Tap.' Let him give it a try,' because I had been trying for years to get that thing off the ground.

I don't think anybody's all good or all bad.

We agreed that we cannot let personal political attacks get in the way of doing the very best we can for California's children.

When I read 'Stand By Me,' it was like, 'This is a look back at the same time period when I was growing up, and it was about kids, but it really felt like what it was like to have those powerful feelings of friendship at age 12.' That's what got to me.