The elegance of staying with a moment, without needing to stop and change all the lighting, made [the alternative] seem lazy and indulgent.

If you try to make interesting films, you're going to be disappointed most of the time. I choose just not to look at it that way.

I'm a Tulsa Jew and I have a religious upbringing.

The deeper you go with the character, the more you see the layers start to peel away. It's more challenging to me, but it's also just interesting. Those are the things I like to watch. I like to watch the evolutions of something.

As an actor, if you step to the side and you look at [Thornton's performance] technically, and you try to imagine doing what he was doing, most people would panic. Most people would be on the set, and they would be panicking, going, "I'm not doing anything!" All the ham instincts in you would be screaming, "You've got to indicate something here." And it's beautiful, in a way. And so I appreciate, even as an audience member, the courage that it takes to be... frankly, to be subtle.

There is a lot of interesting product coming to market already. Bags and bottles and cups and such made of potato starch and other fully biodegradable materials. In some sense, plastic is more chemically complex. We ought to be able to simplify.

You know when somebody really knows what they're drawing from and you can feel it when you see the movie.