I hadn't made that movie before and when I ever met the real Joy Mangano, which happened because De Niro insisted we meet her and her father, that's what she felt like to us. She impressed us with her quiet, serene authority with herself.

I think audiences deserve the benefit of the doubt. I prefer to be surprised by them rather then just assume they'll react negatively to any new idea.

The Fighter was about a family struggling to overcome and fighting each other sometimes, and I went back and rewrote this script which I had written for my son initially because my son has mood disorder.

Christianity has been responsible for plenty of horror and death in the world, all supposedly in God's name.

I think sometimes you have to handle things delicately at work or at home. You know, you can find yourself in situations that are like opening a closet filled with bowling balls that are going to fall out of it, but if you handle things graciously, then that's not going to happen.

The idea that anyone would think their religious ideas make them morally superior is just preposterous.

And if you can come through that and still have some connection to your joy you felt when you were a child that's a very mature kind of a joy that I find inspiring. And Jennifer Lowrence has all that in her, and I've watched her have to go through it even in the last few years.