I grew up in a city, I'm a city person - I go on holiday and I'm bored.

I dont see much difference between it and the other films though I can see on a rational and intelligent level there is a big difference.

One of Dickens' biggest influences was the growth of London as a Victorian city, and the extremes being created as it expanded.

I haven't got anything against films that are about the minutia of relationships or customs, but I love extremes. I love taking a bunch of characters and it usually is a bunch of characters, and you throw something at them that's usually extreme, like a bag of money, or you send them out to explode a nuclear device on the surface of the sun. And those extremes are wonderful for drama.

The sun is the most important thing in everybody's life, whether you're a plant, an animal or a fish, and we take it for granted.

We want to see drama told in a cathartic way, with power, with emotion where you empathize and then you're frightened. All those feelings charge up in you and you feel for the story.

Normally, I'm a very controlling director. Directors are controlling. It's part of the job, but there's various degrees of it and the constructs I normally work on are very controlling constructs.