When I was growing up, I don't remember being told that America was created so that everyone could get rich. I remember being told it was about opportunity and the pursuit of happiness. Not happiness itself, but the pursuit.

I mean I have a project that I have been wanting to make for quite a while now; and basically, it's a story of my parents growing up in the Lower East Side.

I certainly wasn't able to get it when I was a kid growing up on the Lower East Side; it was very hard at that time for me to balance what I really believed was the right way to live with the violence I saw all around me - I saw too much of it among the people I knew.

I go through periods, usually when I'm editing and shooting, of seeing only old films.

Oh, definitely and you know you take the bitter with the sweet but the benefits far outweigh the burdens of what I've been able to do for my family, my word.

I was fortunate enough to hook up with Quincy Jones and had a lot of success. But the music of the '80s really changed when the '90s hit. For me to chase that dream or career of music, I started a family, started on 'Melrose Place,' so it was something I didn't have the time or energy.

I was the first one in the family, on either side, to go to college - much less graduate school.

The most real thing of all, the only thing any of us wants, is to matter to somebody. To feel and share love, even on a friendship level or as deep as a romantic one. Who doesn't want that?