I was doing the promotion for Moon in LA at the same time that Tony Scott was there with [The Taking of] Pelham 123. But obviously he was so concentrating on his own film that he didn't even know I was doing a feature film.

You are spending millions and millions of dollars of other peoples money when you make a movie. You have to at least approach it in a way where you can see how you can make that money back for the people who are investing.

For me, two of my favourite science fiction films are Blade Runner, which is fantastic, and Terry Gilliam's Twelve Monkeys. Both of those were smart science fiction films hitting more of a medium budget, and I desperately hope there is an audience for that kind of film because I would love that to be my next film, on that kind of scale.

Here in the UK the audience immediately reacts and they get the fact that: "What would be the most annoying thing in the world?" A Chesney Hawkes alarm clock!

I'm not Akira Kurosawa. He used to write...He used to write a completely new spec script over a couple of nights. I'm not like that. It takes me a long time to put a film together that I want to make.

We rehearsed for a bit for an Indie film, which is kind of unusual, we had a week of rehearsals before we actually shot the films so we were able to really break down the script and kind of work through all of the improvisational things that he wanted to do, so he had a chance to really feel his way through before we actually shot it and I think that helped a lot.

My biggest difference with our film and those kinds of science fiction films is that they are going from one special effect set piece to the next, what we were doing was more of a character study. And I think that is the freedom that you get by doing an Indie film. You can only really do that with a lower budget. So I understand where the conflict is between those two priorities.