The movie deals with the relationship between a master and his prodigy. What better way to capture that than with the real thing in Hollywood?

I'd never seen anyone work like Al. If there was a scene where his character was getting into a car, he'd talk through the scene of what he must have been doing before he got into the car. He was the most prepared actor I've ever met.

I was a gnomish prodigy - half-human, half-goblin, man-child, child-man.

I was never a prodigy.

Real prodigies seldom have time to read, they are too busy shaking the tree so to speak

There is a sacred horror about everything grand. It is easy to admire mediocrity and hills; but whatever is too lofty, a genius as well as a mountain, an assembly as well as a masterpiece, seen too near, is appalling. Every summit seems an exaggeration. Climbing wearies. The steepnesses take away one's breath; we slip on the slopes, we are hurt by the sharp points which are its beauty; the foaming torrents betray the precipices, clouds hide the mountain tops; mounting is full of terror, as well as a fall. Hence, there is more dismay than admiration. People have a strange feeling of aversion to anything grand. They see abysses, they do not see sublimity; they see the monster, they do not see the prodigy.