I feel profoundly blessed. I feel it's a great privilege to make any motion picture.

You learn by trying and failing. Just a lot of hard work and mistakes.

I had various jobs, I taught a SAT class, I was a bartender, I had a day job at an office and was making short films. I got grants from NYSCA and NEA for an idea, which later became 'Huckabees,' about a guy in a Chinese restaurant who had microphones on every table and heard every personal conversation and would write perversely personal fortunes.

Some of Jimmy Stewart's performance in 'It's A Wonderful Life' is some of the most disturbing performance he ever did, when he falls apart and when he breaks down.

If something - if you have a good rapport then you're friends and you're offered projects together or you discover stories together. Jennifer and I discovered this story together, and it was evident to us we would only do it with each other.

That's what takes people out of the fight half the time. They get hit and half the reaction is your ego is saying, 'I cannot believe that person just lit me up - how humiliating.

When most people turn on their TVs, they don't expect a frank discussion of philosophical ideas in their practical context. Or any context.