The whole visual language of the movie is developed way before we get to set. Especially when you're doing visual effects and you don't have a lot of money to mess around, which we didn't, you have to really preplan everything. Pretty much every shot in the film was figured out months before we got to set.

Casting ethnic characters is a very hard thing to do, but it's important. It's also interesting.

I'm Godless. I've had to make my God, and my God is narrative filmmaking

I hope that Requiem is better than Pi. I hope that Pi is better than my student films, and I'm hoping that I'm getting better as I get older.

Unfortunately, when you're working in film, it's this huge machine, and you've got to get everyone right there, so you get kind of locked into things. I'm not sure where the artistry in film making is. It's usually that moment when you're on set and you're working with the actors. That's the time to play around, the moment of theater. And then you can shape things. But a lot of it is just managing stuff. It's upsetting because you get away from the core.

I think religion is often very different from spirituality. Religion is often about rules and people trying to control our lives who are actually very unspiritual... God can be found anywhere, and in fact, everywhere. And you don

The '90s were a party, I mean definitely maybe not for the grunge movement, but people were partying harder in the '90s than they were in the '80s. The '90s was Ecstasy, the '80s was yuppies. There was that whole Ecstasy culture. People were having a pretty good time in the '90s.