Rap is the only interesting music left - it's the only genre that's still pushing itself, and experimenting in a way that I find exciting.

The first time I hung out with [David Blaine], he took me to this condemned building, and it had a pizza oven and he crawled into the pizza oven and turned the heat on to 400 degrees or something like that, and he stayed in it for I guess a half hour. He came out, and except for one or two second-degree burns, he was unscathed. You meet a lot of musicians and filmmakers and actors, but it's rare to meet someone who can step inside a pizza oven and take the heat. I was intrigued by that.

Editing is fun for me. That's where you make things happen. Filming a movie, I just try to set things up and see where it goes. Editing is a puzzle. I often don't even know what I'm trying to say. I'm just trying to make myself laugh. That's it. It's musical, or something.

I tried working odd jobs that had nothing to do with creating, and it was difficult for me. In the end, I just always loved movies. When I'm making a film I feel most alive, like I'm doing the right thing, and I'm in the place where I need to be.

Directing, to me, starts even before we get to the set. Directing is a fluid, an abstract thing. It's not done only purely in the moment. It's an idea that you plant before. It's a location that you show. It's something I whisper in someone's ear. It's a freeform thing. It only takes me a week to write the script, but it's years that you're thinking about it. The execution is really the fast part.

I just wanted it to be American.

Gucci Mane is trap rap's Frank Sinatra.