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'm attracted to short screenplays. Nobody really wants a film to be over two hours, or at least I don't.

I want studios to be financing director-driven, auteurist cinema, as they did in the '70s. I think it's starting to happen now. Plus, because of how our world has changed politically, I think audiences are demanding more realism. We need to have more stuff in our culture about what is really going on right now.

I don't feel despair because I am able to make the films I want to make, and that gives me hope.

The kindest thing a director can do is look with open eyes at everything.

This is how good movies get made and always have: from the gut instinct of the financiers, not just by committee and research.

Comedy is a wonderful device for distance that allows us to look at what we're talking about with some degree of distance and hopefully with a bit more perspective and honesty. With many exceptions, a movie with no jokes is far less appealing to me.