For me, an actor is really, first and foremost, a person and an individual, more than they are an actor or a professional.

By 1988, I was living in New York myself.

I do love the young adult novels as a form and genre, because it has a purity of intention and heart.

When working on and writing a film, I'm often more of a sponge than other times, aware of what's going on around me.

So there's a choice that I made to tell stories that are still psychological melodramas about domestic issues. The challenge is to figure out how to make 10 films a career as a filmmaker, and that's a really challenging thing.

To me, honesty and the difficulty of honest communication are at the heart of both my life and my movies. The difficulty of being yourself.

I try to keep feeling what's going on and try to use the camera, the actors and the design to enhance those feelings. There's something really emotionally direct and honest about how I put the material with the images. You hope that the strength of mise-en-scene comes from an honesty towards the material. You also hire really well.