The movie I end up with is the movie I aspired to make.

It's no secret that my process is a little bit loose and can be a little bit infuriating to a studio if they don't know what they're signing up for.

I go into a movie sort of saying what it's not going to be.

At the end of the day, I like the spy genre, as opposed to the action movie genre, because spies are smart. The successful spies are the smarter spies.

If I'm not in love with the script, there's nothing. It doesn't matter what you give me. It has to start with the script.

I realize I am contradictory: I have an independent filmmaker's sensibility and a Hollywood director's short-attention span.

When I'm working on a film, I think about how it will play with a tiny audience of friends whose opinions I respect, basically a 40-bloc radius from my apartment in Manhattan.