If you judge everything by how photographically real it looks, then you're missing out on a lot of what art is about and what communication is. There are ambiguities in life, and that should be reflected in art, cinema, and storytelling, I think.

You can muscle your way to the top as long as you're part of the production, which I am. I'm knitted into the money, so it's very hard to extricate me from the decision-making dynamic.

I like that confusion when people are speaking in the same language but still can't understand each other. It's also usually my experience of being in America - when I speak no one can understand what I'm saying.

I think a big part of my job is to make an atmosphere on set and have an attitude that it's about experimentation, and you can't do anything wrong. It's not about judgment, it's not about me kicking over a chair and storming onto set and acting stuff out and telling people to copy what I do. That is a style of directing some people have, but I don't understand it.

I think CGI is interesting but it's too expensive and limiting in terms of what you can do shot-by-shot.

I'm very superstitious about going on other people's sets. You have to ask permission of the director; you shouldn't just turn up and skulk about in the background. It's very rude. You have to ask them personally. It's like a vampire being invited into a house.

The only genre I have any problem with is musicals, but that's just my own tastes it's nothing to do with the films.