As a director, you're only as good as your collaborators. You surround with collaborators that are going to understand what you're trying to do. Not only that, they're going to push and fight for what you're trying to do.

There is a certain thing that you have to just stick to the plan, stick to what you want to do, and you try to work with studios and executives that they get it.

I really believe there is the possibility of something great that can happen in the right hands.

When you work with kids, people tell you to be very delicate, but that's the last thing you should do with kids. They feel patronized if you're like that. They just want you to be normal.

Wow, I wish I could have done something like that.” That’s the thing, with other filmmakers, if I like them I just feel admiration. And yes, I usually say, “I wish I could have been part of that creative process,” because the films I admire like that are so specific that I know the creative process is also so specific, it’s nothing you could just imitate.

I have my misgivings about 3-D. I don't like the lack of blacks and whites, how it dulls the image, how the color gets corrupted. I don't necessarily like the experience of having heavy glasses in front of me.

I left Mexico for artistic survival. If I had stayed, I would have been forced by the government, who control the movie business, to direct TV shows or commercials or infomercials for the government.