For Keeping the Faith, I looked at [George ] Cukor's old films like The Philadelphia Story, stuff that's hilariously funny and really smart with a cutting critique in the humor, too. With this, when I read it, I was laughing a lot.

Everyone keeps saying the western's dead, but it's not.

With Edward Norton you'd never say, "This is the one we're going with whether you like it or not." It has to be agreed upon.

It must be good to be in Germany and France, because I have completely forgotten what it is like to be proud of your government.

In a very philosophic sense I think doing the work is itself a good thing. But at the end of the day, since we're taking other people's shekels to do it, and their work is being able to make a return out of it, it forces you to consider the fact that you're doing it for other people. The whole construct is built around the assumption that it's going to get shared, and that someone else is going to find value in it - entertainment, catharsis, enlightenment, or whatever.

People wrestle sometimes making movies, and I think that conflict is a very essential thing. I think a lot of very happy productions have produced a lot of very banal movies.

If two people are at completely different stages in their spiritual life, that can present a real problem.