My mother Vivian Ayers always instilled within her children that our opinions, our thoughts and our ideas about what was possible was important. My mother made me feel that I was important as a thinker at four-years-old. And I instill that within my students everyday.

You have to examine a scene on the page first. Then you get into the basics of acting: Who are you? Who are you talking to? How do you feel about that person?

That's the only way I can control my movie. If you shoot everything, then everything is liable to end up in the movie. If you have a vision, you don't have to cover every scene.

There are some scenes that work beautifully in a moving, sweeping master, which is how I like to work.

It goes back to a style of moviemaking I remember seeing as a child, in movies like The Man With The Golden Arm, which I think was shot all on a sound stage.

There are so many famous people now that are not really gifted or talented at doing anything other than getting made up, putting on tight dresses, acting badly, getting married. I mean, what the hell? I don't know where we are going with this here in America. And we are setting a tone for the world, because everyone looks at what we do.

I didn't need the insurance. I do it again if my DP tells me it didn't look good in the camera or if the actors didn't hit their marks. But if everything was working why do it again?