I have this embedded faith in the process through which films of a certain type get discovered on longer timelines.

There are tens of thousands of charities and hundreds of thousands, getting towards millions, of people now using it. And when I flip through it, I'm just blown away by people.

You never make all things for all people and can't always pander to the broadest denominator. I keep an eye toward doing the themes that interest me. Do they move me? Interest me? Make me think? When I run across something that is provocative in an unsettling way, it appeals to me.

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

A lot of why I do something is just the novelty of the experience.

I hear about actors being exterior actors and actors being instinctual actors and I always think it's crap. Anybody who knows anything about it knows that good actors do both - they do inside-outward and they do outside-inward. You can't not do both.

I've never acted before in a movie I've directed. This felt like the time to do it just because the " Leaves of Grass" movie itself is so much of a platform for the lead actor. It's really written for an exciting performance and it really depends on the audience watching an extraordinary actor having a great time pulling off this feat. It makes sense to me as a director to act in support of that.