I definitely in filmmaking more and more find writing and directing a means to harvest material for editing. It's all about editing.

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

In the moment of making films, I want to share my observations of life, not of other films.

Whenever I'm asked about independent cinema, I think of what Fidel Castro said during the Cold War about the league of non-aligned nations. He said that really, there were only two non-aligned nations: the U.S. and the USSR. The rest of us have to be aligned somewhere. I say similarly, in a way, Paramount, Sony, and Warner Bros. are the only true independents, because they're the only ones who can do whatever they want and have distribution for their films built in.

I've always approached screenplays and so forth with, "How would it really happen?" Not "What's the movie version?" but "What's the real-life version?" Then I just follow my nose.

Cinema really lends itself well to big, archetypal stories, you know, classic old stories and you need kind of a weird, big terrain like the Japanese plains for Samurai movies or the West. You need that for these giants to walk around.

I definitely in filmmaking more and more find writing and directing a means to harvest material for editing. It's all about editing.