I learned with 'The Beach' that I'm a bit better lower down the radar.

I have this theory that your first film is always your best film in some way. I always try to get back to that moment when you're not relying on things you've done before.

Always changing genres, making very different films is a good idea. It's a way of making yourself feel vulnerable again, getting back to that innocence. As is working within a circumspect budget.

I don't want people to sit there and objectively watch the film. I want them to experience it as something that's under their skin, so you try to make the films really tactile.

Theres a certain truth that you do end up making the same film again and again so if you vary the genre you have a chance of breaking that cycle.

To force yourself out of the comfort zone, the main ingredient is trying to work in a world where you haven't been before, that you don't know the rules of. And that involves a lot of research, so you begin to see where the other people have been, but you are starting from as vulnerable and as low a point as possible.

Movies are about time. You can take that momentum and manipulate time as well, or you can deliberately slow it down, stop it, and start it again. There is no other art form that does that type of manipulation in that way.