Honestly, every person, every individual has a process, and my philosophy, whether it's an actor or an animator, is you try to understand the process that person has so you can get the most out of them, but I think you have to sort of manipulate that process with honesty.

All the traditional westerns are about choice and the individual. When progress comes it's much more difficult to define the individual in that world.

My agent called and said, 'How do you feel about a pirate movie? I mean, how often are you going to get that call? It's sort of the singularly most failed genre of our time, but I thought it had to be attempted one more time. I think there's something rebellious about pirates, something revolutionary about them. They came out of a time when things were oppressive; you could get hung for stealing a loaf of bread. For me, the Pirates films are about when it's right to break the rules to achieve what you want.

Nothing's occurring in animation - you manufacture everything.

The curse is an incredible set of blue balls.

I like horror movies, and in fact I like them even more now after making one. I just think they're much more liberating because you don't really have to apply a very strict logic.

It's always good to keep people guessing.