When I went to film school about three years ago, the first two years you're required to make a series of short films. I started making films based on short poems.

I hate being an actor, they dress you and put on your makeup and you just feel like a little baby.

I am actually turned off when I look at an account and don’t see any selfies, because I want to know whom I’m dealing with. In our age of social networking, the selfie is the new way to look someone right in the eye and say, 'Hello, this is me.'

There is actually a huge suicide problem in Palo Alto schools, so obviously not all is well in paradise. High expectations, and the pressure to achieve in a highly competitive world are too much for a lot of very promising young people. There have been something like ten youth suicides in Palo Alto in the past ten years. They usually step in front of the train that runs by the high school.

Villains can often be one note and I would say in that case, it’s not fun to play the villain. It’s fun to play the villain if he a) has dimension and b) the villain gets to do all the things in the movie that in life he would get punished for. In the movie, you’re applauded for them if you do them with panache. And so that’s why it’s more fun to play the villain.

Adapting a book is essentially a collaboration, whether the author is alive or dead.

There's this phenomenon where people do like to announce movies that they think I'm doing that I'm not.