The whole Orion zeitgeist, of treating filmmakers as partners, to me it's inseparable from the success of 'Silence of the Lambs'.

When Silence of the Lambs did well commercially it was more than anything. My partner Ed Saxon and I were just so relieved that finally we had made a movie that had made some money!

I'll tell you - what I can tell you is that I know when I saw 'Zodiac' and then again when I saw 'No Country For Old Men,' there was a moment in each of my viewing experiences where I went, 'Dammit, this is scarier than 'Silence Of The Lambs.''

By the time I got to 'Silence of the Lambs,' I was madly in love with close-ups because I'm madly in love with actors, and a basic premise of 'Silence of the Lambs' is the story about two people fighting their way into each other's heads.

And Silence of the Lambs is a really smart book.

'Silence Of The Lambs' was not something people expected me to do.