To me, watching a movie is like going to an amusement park. My worst fear is making a film that people don't think is a good ride.

Noah is the battle of justice versus mercy. In Genesis it says that Noah was righteous in his times. You think you sort of know what righteous means, you know, if you listen to a lot of Bob Marley. According to all the biblical scholars we talked to, righteousness is the proper balance of justice and mercy. If you think of that, as a parent, you know that if you have too much justice and you're too strict, you destroy a child. If you have too much mercy, as a parent, you destroy a child as well. A big part of this movie is Noah finding mercy for man.

I try to live my life where I end up at a point where I have no regrets. So I try to choose the road that I have the most passion on because then you can never really blame yourself for making the wrong choices. You can always say you're following your passion.

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

But steady-cams are very different than hand-helds, because hand-held gives you that verite feel.

It would be nice to make a movie that other people want to make, because every one of these movies, I basically have to find the only company in the world that's willing to make it, and it's always a big challenge. I end up spending a tremendous amount of energy and time trying to get money to make these movies and it's exhausting.

I've been joking that if Madonna taught us anything, you've got to reinvent yourself. I think it's important as a filmmaker, as any person working in the arts, that you've got to try new stuff and challenge yourself and take chances. I've tried to take a chance with every film I've done - I've never done it the easy way, and I think that's because that's what excites me, is making as big a mountain as I can in front of me, and just trying to mount it.