I really strongly feel that when you approach a drama, you have to approach it with energy, honesty, sincerity, and absolute commitment, or don't do it.

Sometimes you'll have great actors who aren't comfortable with improvising. Which can get pretty frustrating. But every actor's coming from a different place and they have their own strengths and weaknesses and your job is to sell them as two people in the same world. Some of them have to have their hands held and some I just let loose entirely.

I'm not really worried about people's perception of what I do, or people's analysis of why I make the decisions I make. I wake up every day with a new interest and a desire for an education.

I always cast people with a sense of humor because people that are super serious don't understand when I ask them to eat a booger it's not necessarily about that. It's about something more. It's about inviting a little bit of absurdity into the process and humanity into the process. Making sure that no matter who we are and what sort of pedestal or glamorous lighting we're under, we're all eating boogers man.

One of the things I wanted to do after three, prolonged movies is to do something that was really, kind-of knee-jerk decisions, and artistic instincts and strip down the process to more of a guttural level, and make something that wasn't so manicured and polished; wasn't quite so developed and supported, and just run wild with it and see what happens with it.

I've never wanted to be a fireman, in my life. I've never really wanted to grow up and be anything other than a film director.

Sometimes in the studio movies I've been working in, you'll put a joke in a movie because the crowd loves it - not because I love it.