I think I tend to feel discomfort more when I anticipate or arrive upon moments in which I need to be careful. As a gay person, there's the fear of violence, and we're not making that up.

The praise helps on a deep level, which gives you the grounding that encourages you to trust yourself. On another level, each film is a risk, and the praise doesn't save you from that risk.

Utopia is something that I think about in connection to an experience I had when I was a kid.

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 not to articulate ideas in the film once I've arrived on the plot and the characters. I believe that if I focus my attention with enough compassion and heart on those things, then other things will be revealed, and that's from the education that I've had from the novel.

I think I tend to feel discomfort more when I anticipate or arrive upon moments in which I need to be careful. As a gay person, there's the fear of violence, and we're not making that up.

I'm a version of the same person.