As lovely as people are to me about my performance, I'm still a huge critic. I like very little of what I ever do.

It's all just venom to the soul and symptomatic of a larger issue: the idea of the shortcut. The result without the fight. The fight is the thing. The work.

Nobody really truly supporting independent filmmakers anymore. It's just dire. There's a lot of bad filmmaking, and there's a lot of people worshipping some terrible filmmakers. It's a waste of all of our time, if you don't feel anything. We are an age of YouTube kids. We don't care so much anymore. It's all about marketing.

Whatever you want is as elusive as you make it.

New Zealanders have conventions and pleasantries, but we are direct. We are encouraged to be transparent with our behavior and not to employ passive aggression.

The romance of circumvention is one of the most destructive forces at work in our society. The American Idol freeway to greatness, Instagramming one's way into popular consciousness with selfies of our ass folds beneath short shorts, human growth hormone and performance-enhancing drugs for athletes, Adderall for the idle mind, reality television that sacrifices our dignity for fifteen lousy minutes.

I will say that the food in both Japan and Italy was immaculate. I don't remember having bad food in either country.