I'm one of those big believers that the movie comes together in the way it's supposed to be and that movies are fated to become what they become.

When I make a movie, it's almost a relief to get shooting 'cause the hell is over, or part of the hell is over.

The worst pressure is the pressure I put on myself.

I feel like, as a filmmaker, I'm at my strongest when I write the script and when it comes from me, out of whole cloth. My best work has always been self-generated.

I'm not a film-school guy. I was a high-school dropout. I was on a nuclear submarine. I was an electrician. I was a house painter. So if you get in my face, I'm going to fight you.

You hear again and again that audiences want to see movies that are different and critics say we [directors] make the same thing again and again in Hollywood, then you go and make something different and you get kicked in the gut for it.

I think great acting is about inhabiting a skin and transforming yourself.