I don't know what I am on set. I can be many different things on set depending on how stressful a situation is. But at the end of the day we're making movies, we're not saving the world... we're not an army, no one's lives are at risk and we're just trying to make art, so I think as long as you keep reminding yourself that's what it's about you can have fun.

Levity, you need levity to feel anything. You need to laugh before you cry. I think films that take themselves too seriously without any levity are missing an important ingredient to the potential emotional impact of their stories.

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.

Living in New York, I get excited by the idea of working in a different medium. And it's pretty frightening because whatever skills it takes to make a good piece of theater seem mysterious to me right now.

The authenticity aspect is pretty important to me. When we have to compromise and do something that's not authentic, it really rubs me, every time I have to see it in the edit, which is millions of times.

When you think about being a director, you think about writing stories, putting the camera in interesting places and directing the actors to get your vision, but it's hard to imagine even this process... sitting here nine months later talking about the film and talking about it 20 times in one day. You don't even think about the part where you come to the set every morning and everyone's looking at you to see your mood in order to see what the day is going to be like, and the influence that you wield.

I think it's a fascinating thing to see how lonely people are in this world and what they're looking for. It's a universal concept. So, it's something that interests me and I'll probably revisit it if I get the chance to do the child soldier film because I think it's one of the most important scripts I've written. It's just too dark to do as a film right now. I need to do something a bit different.