It's a hard line to walk, man. Cause you know you want to make this movie, you want to make it dark and real, you want to show all this stuff but unfortunately you can't always do that.

It's not worth it, it's not about money, especially when you're dealing with a culture. It should be about elevating the idea of what we are and who we are as people in the cinema, and that kind of stuff keeps dragging us back down.

What I learned is, don't forget who you are, because that's what's going to make you a filmmaker.

Not harder than it should be, no. We're about the business, we're about the work. It's all about the work, always. We have fun and laugh and there're days that are more intense than others, but we're there to make it better. He's always going to try and make it better, I'm always going to try and make it better. So you accept anything, you accept whatever it takes to get it up on the screen and make it worthy.

The violence you witness is Denzel doing it and we're taking some visual effects and doing some things and you see something happen it's happening in front of you as opposed to cutting away and doing a bunch of tricks. It's in front of you. So it's hard not to make it a hard "R" if you see a guy get punched and teeth wind up in someone's knuckles.

I just think you can't shut your life off to just, you know, one thing. You gotta be open-minded. Explore things. Feed your artist.

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.