With 'Hail, Caesar!' it was about all the skill sets I had to learn, but each movie requires a different way of working. You're a piece in a new world, and there is always a difficult part within that world. For me, it's not consistent from movie-to-movie, each film has a central challenge.

Even when Warren [Beatty] cast me, it had been two years between films at that point.

I'd never worked with an actor-director before [Warren Beatty].

Same with the Coen brothers and Warren [Beatty]. And then slowly you get to know each one of them as a person, and that becomes a kind of separate entity, where you just know the human being.

[Warren Beatty] definitely sees 'Rules' as a comedic consequence to the American sexual puritanism that is dramatically presented in 'Splendor.'

Somebody comes to your house. You know they're coming, so it's not a surprise. And they give you an envelope that has your scenes in it. And they sit in the car outside for a half an hour while you read your scenes, then they ring your doorbell and you give your scenes back. Then you shoot the movie a few weeks later or something. The next time you see your scenes is the night before you start shooting. I never read the script [Blue Jasmine], so I didn't really know what it was about.

Howard Hughes innovation was in the aviation field. His designs and spirit of experimentation was at the forefront. As far as his work as film producer, he certainly went after a bigger and more ambitious kind of filmmaking, even if he wasn't necessarily a cinema artist.