When you're the guy behind the camera, you're aware of the reasons for the compromises or the changes that get made. As an actor, you go and do your thing, and someone else down the line then does all the math and goes, "We can't include that thing where he's pretending to be dumb and needling those people, because it takes a minute and a half, and it ruins the next scene. It doesn't make sense." If you're directing, you're the one doing that.

After I left LA... it was like waking up. And so I moved back east and stopped auditioning.

I have friends who remember seeing fish hauled onto a boat's deck and beaten to death.

In my movies, there has been little to do in the way of animal rights. I have never worked in a movie with animals. No horse-riding, no trained dogs, lions, bears. A few actors, but what could I do? We had to have them.

When people ask me why I don't eat meat or any other animal products, I say, 'Because they are unhealthy and they are the product of a violent and inhumane industry.'

The first dog I had was owned by an abusive couple. He was very skittish. He wouldn't let me hold him. It was explained to me that it was because of how he was treated.

All cultures are different. Some commit genocide. Some are uniquely peaceful. Some have enormous hunting festivals or annual stretches when nobody speaks. Some don't use electricity. In American culture, we obsess about celebrities. We create them, build myths around them, and then hunt them and destroy them. I don't know where its taking us or what it means but I know we do it.