The religion itself may have some great ideas, but I can't take it seriously if it's blatantly exclusionary.

The endings for all my characters seem sufficiently human and messy for me to feel comfortable with them. In some ways they have only moved an inch, but sometimes an inch is a great distance.

You know, veterans come home and they may not be bipolar, but after they've been through a war with PTSD or a head injury, their families have a handful when they come home.

The great lesson about filmmaking is never take "no" for an answer, especially if you have a lot of passion and inspiration to do something.

There's nothing better than an actor who is really, really hungry to show everything they've got.

I think what makes compelling fiction or cinema is when you're basically taking the most intense moments of experience and you're creating a song or a narrative out of it.

I would say that when I came into this chapter of my filmmaking career, starting with 'The Fighter,' there was this sense that you have to go from your instincts and you have to go from your gut, and you have to not hesitate and you have to not hedge.