Kevin Smith is so great in 'Kingdom Come,' isn't he? He's kind of this very earthy poet. He just has this immediate gregariousness, like, you kind of just want to be his pal.

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.

We're living in a time where movies are very unimportant. They're not leaving a footprint on your heart. We're going to the movies now and we're going, "Oh, man, that was cool! That was thrilling! That was a ride!" But, we're not walking away anymore thinking, "I just experienced something that could change the way I live."

At every turn you have to find a new kind of self-sovereignty over your environment. Every kid I see is at the mercy of Periscope, Twitter, or an Angry Bird of some description. People are shackled to their mediocrity by companies and businesses who want to consume your life with theirs.

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.

We are not taught that hardship is the anvil upon which we are beaten into beauty. We are not taught that some of our greatest moments are some of our most difficult.

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.