The writing gets done away from the keyboard and away from the studio in my head, in solitude. And then I come in and hopefully have something, then I wrestle with sounds and picture all day long. But the ideas usually come from a more obscure place, like a conversation with a director, a still somebody shows you, or whatever.

When I was 13, when I was 14, when I was in England, yeah all I wanted to do was go and see The Who, go and see The Stones.

America is a magical place, and I think my job, or the job of a lot of us European filmmakers is to just hold up America to Americans and present it to you in a new way. All I wanted to do is in a funny way say, "Look at your country. It's magnificent."

Trust me, if you're working on a $70 million movie and you're the last guy, you feel all that weight on your shoulders.

I'm a geek and I'm a nerd, and I can listen into any piece of music. I think, I can usually tell you what orchestra it was, I can usually tell you what hall it was in. I can tell you, obviously who the conductor was, and who the composer was.

I've spent my life trying to make things simpler.

As opposed to being on the Internet, there's something really nice about reading a book or talking to authors.