I went to college, I went pre-med, I thought I was going to be a doctor.

I want my audiences to be as open-minded as my characters.

I'm a believer that people need to understand that filmmaking is not a perfect process for anybody. It is a process in which you find the film and the film finds you. And that is every film.

And the biggest improvement I see between 'Up in the Air' and 'Juno' and 'Thank You for Smoking' is that 'Up in the Air' deals with the complicated human stuff in a way that my other films have not. It's a more articulated film, and because of that, I'm most proud of it.

I don't want to make films that give you the answer. If there is a message to my films - and I hope there isn't - it's to be open-minded.

Comedy and horror are cousins; they're related. They both come from storytellers who want to specifically affect the audience and elicit specific reactions during the movie.

I'm equally guilty of using technology - I Twitter, I text people, I chat. But I think there's something strangely insidious about it that it makes us think we're closer when in fact we're not seeing each other, we're not connecting.