In the past I've made movies that were pretty universally liked. You can't really hate them. You can discard them, but you can't really hate them.

It's just what I am. When I am in the zone making one movie, I just didn't want to read anything else or do anything else, so I don't really develop projects.

Only one time in my career I had that feeling [that this is not gonna get made], it was for this movie [Life of Pi]. It was right before we started the physical pre-production. I pre-visualized the whole ocean part before we made the movie, I was that prepared. At one point they seemed to want to drop it because it was really risky. The budget we proposed was a lot higher than they expected, they wanted to [drop it]. After all, it's a philosophical book and a literature property, it's not Batman.

Sometimes films ignore other points of view because it's simpler to tell the story that way, but the more genuine and sympathetic you are to different points of view and situations, the more real the story is.

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

Mostly it's like, I get inspired by something and I want to learn that part of filmmaking, I want to delve into that kind of depth. And leading, also, a lot of people. A lot of people, for two years of their life they follow me, and they believe what I believe in. So that's some responsibility and I'd like to make it worth the effort.

I guess in Hollywood you chart your life by Oscars. You say to each other, "Remember when that movie won that year? It was 2006. Remember that?"