Back when you were doing plays like 'The Miracle Worker,' you had 20, 25 people in the cast. When you go to make the film, that's not such a stretch. But when you're doing plays like 'Proof,' it's just five people or something in the thing, and it gets to be a really difficult re-conception.

I've been writing plays since the seventies and only came to moviemaking when I basically realized that I needed some money to pay the rent. I started to watch films with an eye to figuring out how to write them.

You have to live in order to have something to write about - you get caught up in moviemaking and celebrities and money, and it's very intoxicating, but it doesn't give you what you need as a writer. You have to do something else for that.

Playwriting is the last great bastion of the individual writer. It's exciting precisely because it's where the money isn't. Money goes to safety, to consensus. It's not individualism.