John Lee Hancock

I remember going to McDonald's for the first time probably when I was in college. And then I remember going and visiting a friend in Wyoming, and he said, 'We're going to do something special. We're going to McDonald's.'

I grew up in a refinery town in Texas, and we weren't fancy enough to have a McDonald's.

Every time you do a true story - and I've done a few - you have to look in the mirror and say, 'That's close enough. I'm comfortable with this.' You're always going to compress time; you're going to change the order of things. But I don't think you want to tell a big lie. You want to think that you're embracing the truth.

I grew up in Texas City, Texas. I didn't know anybody who was a director or whose parents or grandparents were directors. I met somebody from a nearby town one time whose father had been to the moon - it was far more likely to be an astronaut than it was to be a writer or a director.

Every generation comes upon the movie again, and then, invariably, the books have a spike in sales because people want to read more about Mary Poppins.

I didn't know the books and certainly didn't know the tragic origin story of Mary Poppins in 1906 Australia.

I just hope, every now and then, the studios still slip one of my movies in.

A corporation that is publicly traded, it has one goal: to make money. It doesn't have a soul. If it does have a soul, it comes from the people who run it.

We have the word 'Mc' attached to so many things now, like 'McMansions.' It's become part of our vernacular as something on steroids almost, just bigger and bigger. I think, to a degree, studios have fallen prey to that as well.

How many superhero movies can we have? It seems like there are 19 a week. They're making money, though, and people are going to see them. So, I get it. I understand completely.

I've never read a script in which you are actively pulling for the protagonist in the beginning, but little by little, you lose that.

If America had a motto, it would be pull yourself up by the bootstraps, work harder than the next guy, have a goal and achieve it.

Many years ago, I was a producer on a movie called 'My Dog Skip.' Willie Morris, the great southern writer, had written the book. We had adapted it and taken 17 years of his life and compressed it into one year.

I like some time away to recharge the batteries, not only physically but emotionally, so that I get to the point where I'm just dying to direct again, and then that's the right time to do it again.

We did not go to that many movies in a theater in the little town I grew up in.

Somebody might say that they always wanted to be a fly-fishing guide in Montana and maybe they'll never get to do that but just by the virtue of having said it out loud, I think there's some power in that.

A good deed is a good deed.

When you are older, you want to be around people you admire, even in their personal lives.

Someone is going to win and someone is going to lose. That's also what happens in almost every movie - someone is going to win and someone is going to lose.

I really don't storyboard unless it's an action sequence of some kind, but I plan carefully.