My first book, 'Fast Forward', was about growing up in the shadow of Hollywood and how kids are affected by the culture of materialism and the cult of celebrity, and I've often felt the reason my work has an audience in the U.K. is because it's everything the British love to hate about the Americans.

I focus on a lot of women's issues.

I am very lucky that my first film was fully commissioned by HBO.

My photography is often a sociological look at American culture, and it's been very well published in the U.K.

When studios start telling me why a particular film project won't work, I remember 'Rocky.' I remember that the biggest success Bob Chartoff and I have had was a film nobody wanted to make.

Everyone takes pause at 40. It's the age you have to assess everything in your life. It's the fictitious marker that's always coming up when you're young. The world really does look at you to kind of have it together by 40, and be successful by 40. Whatever success means.

You take all the things that frighten you, and when you can get them to work for you all of sudden people are calling you a success.

Barack Obama likes to point to General Motors as the poster child for the job creation success of his economic policies. However, whatever your sentiments about the government's bailout of General Motors, for every job Barack Obama 'saved-or-created' in the U.S. there were two jobs off shore.