I never wanted money worries to slow me down or make me take a job I didn't want.

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.

But it's just that the whole country is making generally lousy films these days and has been for quite a while. That's the big problem that we all have to think about.

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

The worst thing for people to say about your movies is, "Yeah, it was pretty good, but it was too damn long.".

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.

A lot of documentaries have been made very quickly, but I think they're like frogs in an ecosystem: They're harbingers. Film is always two or three years behind, because it takes so long to write a script, get financing, and get it made. It just takes a while. But I think it's coming. It has to.