What is filmmaking but groping in the dark?

There is an audience out there for literate films - slower, more observant, more human films, and they deserve to be made.

Each one of my movies becomes easier to get off the ground.

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.

I still have energy and some degree of youth, which is what a filmmaker needs.

I like actors who, when you see them on screen, you sense a person, not just an actor.

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.