It's important to keep the people who know you well around you. It helps center you.

If anyone ever said biopic I would say, "It's not a biopic." We're fighting uphill against the weight of history. I was like, why don't we just call it historical fiction?

I think that it's much more important to do than to say. And you learn that a lot from your kids, who are watching you, you know?

I understand what's it like to work all week and on Friday night just want to go and leave your brain at the door, buy some popcorn and be thrilled by something.

Once the steam engine went away and we started moving into burning fossil fuels - not just burning them, but everything we do with oil - we've been experiencing [these problems] at an accelerated rate. The scary end-game scenario is getting closer and closer, about what we're going to be able to do to sustain life on this planet as we have come to know it. And I think this is a very real possibility, that we could be dealing with conditions we have no idea how to wrestle with.

I think having good family and friends really helps to ground you.

I'm trying to steal from everybody. So yeah, there's cats that I'm personally affiliated with - Carl Franklin, Paul Thomas Anderson - and others that I don't know personally but their work I'm a big admirer of, like Martin Scorsese. But I'm hoping to come up with a language that is mine, that's specific to my take on this material.