My playing music is strictly for fun. When I was in a band, I was really excited to talk about it since I had never really played music to that extent. It was never meant as something I would consider as anything more than having fun with my friends. But I think I would enjoy writing music for the movies that I'm working on.

I'm fascinated by how ethnic communities have assimilated into massive capitalist environments.

There's only a handful of people I trust completely, and I know who they are. Other than that, I pretty much don't trust people.

I want things to be characters and not me. Why would I want to play me?

I usually bring a point and shoot with me so I can go out on the weekends and shoot a bit. I used to bring more cameras, but I'm also an Ebay nut so sometimes I'll order something if I'm really pining for it when I'm on location.

Russia itself is an extremely complex country, and sometimes I feel like all of that comes back to haunt me. I can see why so many Russian writers were so tortured.

And also, that's the kind of wonderful thing about film culture, is the interaction between films and who works on what, where they were before, and now what they're doing now, and that inevitably informs how people view a film.