What science-fiction premises do is it gives you a "what-if" prism to look at the contemporary world with a wack on the side of the head.

You just never know when you're living in a golden age.

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

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.

If you have your movies so that everyone understands everything, I think that's probably not a very good movie.

I always wanted 'Sideways' to be like a great 1960s Italian film.

The better a novel is, in literary terms, the more you can't be faithful. The novel succeeds on terms exclusive to literature. A good film succeeds on terms exclusive to the cinema. That's why so many bad novels can become good movies.