The weird thing is that I hate to fly, and the quote that I give people is that every time I get off a plane, I view it as a failed suicide attempt.

The first cut I do is usually between five and 10 minutes shorter then the cut that we release. Anything I think isn't working or might not work, I don't even put it in the director's cut. And usually it's the studio suggesting I put stuff back in, as opposed to studios saying, "You got to lose 40 minutes," they are always saying, "You've got to gain five minutes."

When I move from being a cameraman to being a director I looked at a lot of other cameramen who tried to make the move. And in each case they moved up their camera operator to be the DP, which really meant they didn't want to give up being the DP, and really wanted to do both. And my feeling was if I was going to succeed as a director, I had to just be a director and give up the safety net of being a cameraman.

I don't believe in leaving a scene in because it was really hard to shoot, or because it's the reason you took the movie, or because you always wanted to work with an actor . . . If it's not making the movie work, get rid of it.

I'm an unusual director in that my cut is usually shorter then the final released film. I like short films.

It always happens at the end that you're always under the gun because of various schedules and all that.

We should all relax about life because you don't have a clue as to what's really going on.