Quotes

Explaining the meaning behind "deep-cover" in deep-cover agent: "Oh it's laughable... What it means is that you have an ostensible occupation, a cover job, and that you don't go about introducing yourself as a CIA agent. You don't work out of an embassy, in fact you don't go near an embassy, and all of your meetings and reporting take place clandestinely."

On his experience being a deep-cover agent for the CIA: "It's one of the most boring occupations in the world, punctuated by moments of ecstasy. You sit around for days, sometimes for weeks, waiting for something you think you have made happen, to happen. And sometimes it does, and sometimes it doesn't. Or waiting for an agent to show up. They're famous for not doing that, or showing up in the wrong place or on the wrong day, wrong hour."

I worked with Saul Zaentz a good deal, for example. Saul is the sort of man-he is the antitheses of the general idea of what a producer is like. Saul will owe you 25 cents and says he will pay it at 2:16 in the afternoon on the corner of 42nd and Lexington. He will be there with the quarter. He is a man of his word. I forget-he's made six or seven pictures and five have won Best Picture Oscars. Saul is an artist even though he is a producer.