The only Sundance [2011] film about cults that could actually have life as a cult film, THE WOODS has the greatest comic insight into why our current culture might inspire a search for meaning in the first place.

For me, the Dennis Wilson story is a quintessential You Must Remember This story because it's one of these stories that people never talk about, don't really think about, and it's forgotten within this major thing that is thought to be this cataclysmic event of the 20th century.

I was trying to see if I could produce an episode - completely write it and research it and record it and edit it - all by myself in a week.

I just think the David O. Selznick story is one of the great, epic stories of Hollywood history that nobody knows. Maybe one of the reasons why nobody knows it is because he wasn't a movie star.

One of the reasons why I failed was because I figured out in the research process that I couldn't tell it as just, This is what Frances Farmer's life was like. There are so many questions as to what her life was like because of the way her story has been seized upon and exploited by different factions.

As a performer, I could be like, I don't want to leave that in there. But as a producer, I have to leave it in there.

If you look at pictures of David O. Selznick , he wasn't even attractive. There's no way to portray him in a way that is glamorous, but that's one of the things that's fascinating to me about him.

Between the action sequences, the pleasure lies in observing impeccably dressed Brits exchanging barbed witticisms - making it, basically, Downton Abbey with cyber crime and shower sex.

The stuff that I've been doing lately is political. It's not always about people who are super famous movie stars. The fact that people are still taking a chance and listening to the blacklist episodes is really exciting.

You read these stories of people who were in Hollywood in the late '60s. After they found out about the murders, everybody was like, Have you met [Charles] Manson? Have you been to that ranch? In some way, everybody felt connected, but what was it like for people who really were connected.

In terms of the way the industry operates, the studio system was such its own thing. It's so different now that it's a globalized world.