I’ve always considered myself an actor first and foremost.

But I’d shot enough independent films as an actor, one as a director. I knew that you have to be very specific when you’re shooting a period picture.

The thing is, I’m a very practical filmmaker.

I wanted to be an actor when I was a kid.

I’ve directed a film set in the ’50s.

But usually I’ll wake up and start writing about nine o’clock. I’ll probably write for about three hours, and I’ll do that over the next month and a half.

When I write a screenplay, and when I direct, I always pull lines out.

I was always attracted to the past as a kid.

I had already made, like, 25 movies, playing a variety of roles, and it was a very frustrating time, … I really couldn’t get a job, and the only jobs I could get were, like,...

It’s more interesting because you get to research the history of the period, and all the different aesthetic elements that make a film, particularly this film, so stunning.

Even The Impostors, as silly as it is, is a very intimate film, in a way.

You gotta make the movie you want to make.

I was dissatisfied just being an actor.

As a director you have to be careful you don’t over-design the film. You have to be careful that the period aspect does not take over.

Like Joseph Mitchell, I would scour the streets of New York and find little pieces of what other people think of as junk – and collect it.

I didn’t know you had to change diapers so often. I couldn’t believe it – we must change them 10 times a day – each. So that’s 20 diapers a piece a day.

I would rather just do the things I want to do.

I have consciously not taken the role of a gangster, which has been offered to me far too many times.

My partner, Beth Alexander, and I want to produce smaller films, but commercially viable films that will enable me to make the kinds of movies I want to make.

I don’t like to move the camera that much anyway.

I write in the mornings. During my down time.

[Although his love for delivering a juicy story was well-known, Tucci maintains the media coverage of President Clinton and Monica Lewinsky goes far beyond Winchell’s style.] It’s out of hand, tapes being released and reports...

People wear shorts to the Broadway theater. There should be a law against that.

I hope that a younger generation will start to watch a movie like this and start to better understand a slower pace in a truly cinematic way.

I’d read Up in the Old Hotel, and I wanted to do something with Mitchell’s stuff for a long time.

He was capable of tremendous generosity, and of real cruelty,

So I went to SUNY. at Purchase, studied acting at the conservatory. Did some plays, later TV. Nothing unusual.

I like to see how I can do it for less money.

I’m a control freak. Totally.

He does things comically that most people can’t do. It’s very hard to do what he does. He makes it seem effortless.

So yes, I hope to act in other people’s movies, big and small, because that’s how I make my living, really.

I like to use all of myself, and acting wasn’t doing that.

I’m actually one who will encourage directors to cut my lines.

belly laughs.

Sometimes it’s difficult directing yourself on film because you can’t quite separate yourself from the subject.

I make time to write.

I’m not interested in wasting money on a project.

As a director, I also get to sit and watch actors and learn from them in a way that I don’t get to do when I’m just acting.

The constraints of melodrama can be a great blessing, because they demand that all the characters involved – as absurd and extreme as they may initially seem – must stay utterly rooted in their own...

I mean, Scorsese’s a genius, and that’s one way of shooting.

I’m not saying they won’t be bigger projects someday.

Big Night and The Impostors are both things that I wrote.

The majority of directors I’ve worked with didn’t know how to talk to actors.

I never go overbudget on my movies.