I like voice-over in films, and most of my films have been voice-over films.

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

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.

The thing is, right now the films don't need to be overtly political to be about our times. We also need films that are just human, that are about people. People need that, too. It's like we need to reconnect to what it is to be human. Not just what our political situation is. That's not what I'm thinking about exclusively. Human content is needed again, as it was in the '70s. I think films were more human than they've been since then.

I spend a long time casting, but once I've cast a film there's a reason why I selected those people. So I'm hands-on in selecting the cast, hands-off to see what they do with their characters, and hands-on again to offer suggestions.

I think cynicism lasts. Sentimentality ages, dates quickly.

I don't think so much about verbal comedy. I always think about visual comedy. I was raised watching silents, and I'm always thinking about how to make cinema, not good talking - although I want good talking. I'm much more interested in framing, composition, and orchestration of bodies in space, and so forth. My goal is always what Chuck Jones wanted his Warner Brothers cartoons to be, which was if you turn down the sound, you could still tell what's going on. I think if you watch most of my films with the sound off, you could still tell what's going on.