The actors are the greatest executors of tone in a film. They're the most important cinematic component.

A book is a book, but a movie is a movie. The more faithful you are, the more you'll come up with Harry Potter #1 and #2, which are like filmed books on tape. They're so petrified of turning off the readers that they make no concessions to the fact that they're trying to make a piece of cinema.

I'd love to be a director-for-hire and get a nice paycheck and captain one of those big ships, but I think studios mistakenly think I want to write what I direct - which I don't. I write out of desperation, because I never get a script I like, other than "Nebraska." It's a matter of: What's the screenplay? Is it intelligent? Is it human? I don't care what genre, what scale. I'm here for the movies.

As the years go by and I make more films, I am increasingly interested in capturing place as a vivid backdrop for my films.

The actors are the greatest executors of tone in a film. They're the most important cinematic component.

I like actors who, when you see them on screen, you sense a person, not just an actor.

A pitfall of making a comedy with a studio-and it's also an American cultural thing-is that I get tired of being encouraged to go always for laughs.