The structural notions to me always have to be worked out very carefully in the script stage. Whatever a particular structure is. Whether it's chronological or non-chronological. To me that's always about what point of view are we trying to address in the film?

A camera is a camera, a shot is a shot, how you tell the story is the main thing.

I always find myself gravitating to the analogy of a maze. Think of film noir and if you picture the story as a maze, you don't want to be hanging above the maze watching the characters make the wrong choices because it's frustrating. You actually want to be in the maze with them, making the turns at their side, that keeps it more exciting...I quite like to be in that maze.

Revenge is a particularly interesting concept, especially the notion of whether or not it exists outside of just an abstract idea.

What I react against in other people's work, as a filmgoer, is when I see something in a movie that I feel is supposed to make me feel emotional, but I don't believe the filmmaker shares that emotion. They just think the audience will. And I think you can feel that separation. So any time I find myself writing something that I don't really respond to, but I'm telling myself, 'Oh yes, but the audience is going to like this,' then I know I'm on the wrong track and I just throw it out.

The problem with big films is they snowball very rapidly and you can never pull back. It's a pipeline that needs to be fed.

The term 'genre' eventually becomes pejorative because you're referring to something that's so codified and ritualised that it ceases to have the power and meaning it had when it first started.