Even my wife and two of my children are in "Leaves of Grass". Because I love the source material so much, it was really easy to write and an utter delight to get to direct because I had people like Edward [Norton] elevating the material and surprising me in their interpretations of all of this stuff that's so close to me.

When people come together too young, they try to become one person. As you get older, you realize that you don't want to become one person because then you lose the person you are.

I don't feel insecure about any of this work anymore. Maybe I don't have what I had when I was younger. I'm not really hungry to prove anything to anybody, really. But when I stand outside myself and observe what I think are my strengths and weaknesses going into directing, it's what you just said, an affliction to organize moments.

But at the same time, the film industry just got torched. The risk tolerance for the types of movies we're talking about is lower, and the reason for that is that the captains of the industry were asleep at the switch when their core business was being disrupted. And they're never getting it back. In a way, it makes it all the more exciting when the good ones get through.

My greatest hope is that we transcend the most fearful thing, which is that we are rapidly degrading the ecological systems on this planet that support everything we are doing and all life on it.

There are things you do for the fun of doing them or to work or to hang with certain people. But the projects that I've invested myself in and cared about most deeply have absolutely been activated by a desire to chase something that I relate to, or that I see as having the potential to speak to someone else directly.

Suspension of disbelief and that whole question is part of the heart of the 'Leaves of Grass'movie.