own and a code of their own.
a kind of swagger and a confidence and
an authority. Growing up on Long Is-
land and then spending time in the city,
we'd been around a lot of these "great
men" -- really successful businessmen
who had an outside sense of influence
based on their success, people who were
listened to and looked up to.
self-destructed in a business sense.
Some of them went to jail; some of
them went bankrupt. Others made mis-
takes with their appetites and ruined
their family relationships. I wrote a
book that featured one of these types of
guys. Then Brian witnessed an event
that inspired Solitary Man.
walking with his daughter who was in
who had been a titan of industry and had
made some bad career decisions, putting
a lot of stuff in jeopardy. He was one of
these guys who always wore black because
he thought it was both cool and slim-
ming. He had become recently divorced
from his wife and he turned to his daugh-
ter and said, "Don't call me Dad in public
because it will make it harder for me to
pick up women."
of anger, I began writing. A real sign of the
constructive nature of our partnership is
that I showed these pages to Dave and he
encouraged me to finish it on my own. So
I went off, finished it, showed it to Dave
again, and we decided to make the film.
do it and keep writing, then all this other
stuff can happen -- like writing and di-
recting amazing actors. But none of it can
happen if you don't write.