I've become friends with Michael Mann and Oliver Stone; I've seen those guys work and that was great to see.

I don't think the audience goes and thinks of the movie as a piece of art - there are some independent people who may go and have a higher appreciation for filmmaking. It is a great art form, but I don't think you look at a painting and a movie with the same eye.

You want to take yourself seriously, and you want to make something that you hope will have resonance with the audience. You want to bring your perspective and what you consider your talent to that piece of work, and you move forward in that direction. Sometimes that's easy, and sometimes it's met with resistance because you're dealing with situations where, for everybody else, it's a piece of business.

One hundred percent, I mean, many of the Sergio Leone movies were with Clint Eastwood, and that's what it is.

Being a kid growing up with Kurosawa films and watching Sergio Leone movies just made me love what it could do to you, and how it could influence you - make you dream.

You'll see in the movie he constantly does that-he only drinks his tea a certain way, brings his own tea bags, the guy pours hot water, it's like a consistency throughout the film, but he never breaks his habits. I mean, to a point, where he has to.

I started studying mythology, just on my own. Joseph Campbell, mysticism.