And the best films feel like a fist punching you in the solar plexus and all elements of the filmmaking process - the acting, the design, the cinematography, the music, is all working to one end.

The Woodstock Film festival is among the finest of a dying breed: a festival that isn’t trying to sell you anything, but simply and beautifully celebrating the art & craft of filmmaking.

I love really exploring... you know, a cop drama for example is a great way to explore class in this country and explore, you know, really, identity in the country and who we are in a way that is extremely exciting, but it's also real, you know, it's also real people and real drama. The same with the military. I mean, a good science fiction story is also great.

I have had so many bad auditions.

I don't know what has happened to movies, but lately every movie is at least 20 minutes too long. It used to be that if you were three hours long it was because it was epic - a movie about Gandhi; something with very important subject matters.

The older I get, the more I realize how rare it is to meet a kindred spirit.

Well, there's a great Marlon Brando quote that to do something well you have to spiritually marry your director. You have to be making the same movie they are in that you have to try to help their imagination be better, and more full, and more fully realized, but you can't have a different imagination because then you end up - and you see this a lot in movies - where it feels like they were making five different films.