You can't control everything that comes to you.

I like it when the deeper you go with the character, the more you see the layers start to peel away.

When you have a pipe salesman with a business called Macabee Pipes, I'd say you've got your tongue planted firmly in your cheek.

To me, achieving tone, achieving consistency, is exactly the job of a director. It is to be the fusing, the nexus of a whole bunch of people contributing to the complex life of a movie. There are actors, there's a cinematographer, there're costume people, set people, there are all these things, and you somehow have to be the person in the middle of it who is making it all synchronize into the same magic bubble.

Making really great music, making really great films, writing great books is an antidote to all of that. And, as people, as artists, some of the massive disruption that technology is causing is so exciting, the way that people can share creativity now.

But work that's got real substance does make people feel, "There's someone else out there who relates to my experience, or who just helped me understand my own experience a little bit better." And I think that's still got enormous value.

I like to get into a lot of things besides movies. I've been very involved with a few specific efforts. We built this park in New York and it's been a very successful project... I worked on a conservation project in East Africa... Too much of this type of stuff can get you wrapped up in your own work and I love it.