Fantastic! Right in the middle of that long stretch between Christmas and Spring Break, your coats are getting dirty, everything's dark, dingy - what a great time for a movie!

I don't want to be too cool. You get so caught up with whether you're doing it right.

I always preferred to hang out with the outcasts, 'cause they were cooler; they had better taste in music, for one thing, I guess because they had more time to develop one with the lack of social interaction they had!

Many filmmakers portray teenagers as immoral and ignorant, with pursuits that are pretty base... But I haven't found that to be the case. I listen to kids. I respect them... Some of them are as bright as any of the adults I've met.

I so desperately hate to end these movies that the first thing I do when I'm done is write another one. Then I don't feel sad about having to leave and everybody going away. That's why I tend to work with the same people; I really befriend them.

I so desperately hate to end these movies that the first thing I do when I'm done is write another one. Then I don't feel sad about having to leave and everybody going away.

It's like being at the kids' table at Thanksgiving - you can put your elbows on it, you don't have to talk politics... no matter how old I get, there's always a part of me that's sitting there.

At the time I came along, Hollywood's idea of teen movies meant there had to be a lot of nudity, usually involving boys in pursuit of sex, and pretty gross overall. Either that or a horror movie. And the last thing Hollywood wanted in their teen movies was teenagers!

I was obsessed with romance. When I was in high school, I saw 'Doctor Zhivago' every day from the day it opened until the day it left the theater.