I've been wanting to make a movie about the war in Sierra Leone, specifically, for more than 15 years.

I don't really put trophies out. I don't keep trophies around my apartment.

It takes the wool from your eyes about how the world works, to show you that nothing's necessarily fair, and that you might have a hard life.

Sometimes the best set experiences make for the worst films. So, you don't want it to be too good an experience! But the bulk of your life is working with people and collaborating so you don't want anyone to be miserable on your film either. You want it to be something that people walk away from saying that it was a good experience for them and hopefully a good film. As a director, you are sort of leader of that troupe for that period of time, so you're aware of morale and your effect - how you are as a person and how that sort of trickles down to everyone else.

I'm pretty hard to impress, and I'm pretty exacting, in terms of what I want from my props department and art department. We spend many, many hours going over visual research and finding the right artists to create the material.

I don't think I'd ever write anything that I don't also direct just because it's so hard and painful to write as it is.

In a city like New York, especially for young professionals who aren't in a family situation, most people don't cook for themselves. This is the only city I've ever lived in where I eat out every night.