I basically made the movie from the crew's suggestions. For one scene, I wanted some kids' toys against the wall in Mikey's room, to give the scene texture, and we tried a field hockey stick. It looked really good to me, until someone had to say that in America, field hockey is more of a girl's game. Gradually I got tuned into the world - that happens on every movie.

My cultural roots are something illusive.

Meanwhile, the Ice Storm was still in development, And that was something I really wanted to do, and frankly I don't think I was ready to do a big production like this.

I feel like all of my characters now take this congested situation, they clash, and from there you purge yourself.

You can get rich or famous by doing the same thing.

For a filmmaker, it's a rare chance to do a personal film on a big canvas.

So anything that's not absolutely needed, we would cut it [footage] out, which would make me very insecure; everything has to work, and it's a water movie in 3D with a kid, animals. So the more I do that, the more I'm scared of "What if it doesn't go the way we want it?" But we had to do that to meet the budget, otherwise we wouldn't even have a start-date.