Writers and filmmakers have this age-old relationship to the material.

I just absolutely go for it when somebody says, "No, you can't have this." That's why I spent my entire life sucking off straight men. "Okay, so you think you're straight, do you? We'll see about that."

As you get older and more successful, you don't get magnetically drawn to aristocracy, you get magnetically drawn to power, and it gets magnetically drawn to you. It's a symbiosis whether you like it or not.

When somebody say no, it's a red flag to a bull to me.

I found my friends very amusing the first time because they are funny and amusing. They really are because they're people who've got everything. They're sort of like camp caricatures of what you expect an aristocrat should be: vicious, rude, caustic unpleasantries.

I was very inspired by Peter Mullan's film about those kinds of places where you put people who'd been bad.

As I found out making this last movie ["Method"], if you ever do things in an unusual, different way, you got to fight because there's no way people will let you.