Independent means one thing to me: It means that regardless of the source of financing, the director's voice is extremely present. It's such a pretentious term, but it's auteurist cinema. Director-driven, personal, auteurist... Whatever word you want. It's where you feel the director, not a machine, at work. It doesn't matter where the money comes from. It matters how much freedom the director has to work with his or her team. That's how I personally define independent movies.

Adult movies with any artistic credit are released in the last quarter of the year and expected to gird for battle for Globes and Oscars. So the films aren't being seen just for themselves, but rather in a competitive context.

I think about what movie I would like to see. I don't think of them as a correction or palliative. I certainly am irritated by anything that's shot in the Midwest and filled with these noble people. "Oh, they're so good, and they're so honest..." I'm not interested in that. I just think of what's right for a movie.

I like to think of film-making not just as an act of personal self-aggrandisement but rather as an act of public service.

I read reviews of critics I respect and feel I can learn something from. Right now there are a lot of bottom-feeder critics who just have access to a computer and don't necessarily have an academic or cinema background that I can detect, so I tend to ignore that and stay with the same top-tier critics that I've come to respect. I like reading a good review - it doesn't have to be favorable, but a well-thought-out one - because I very much appreciate the relationship of directors and critics.

In a general sense, to convert any short story, novel, play, or opera into a movie, you have to re-rig it. Even though they're all narratives over time, they're very different forms.

I'm considered to some degree a successful director working in Hollywood, making films my way but using studio financing. But with almost every single one, I get praised up the wazoo by people who never would have financed the films. It's: "Gee, this movie is so new and different - what do you want to do next?" "This." "Oh, that's too new and different."