I have a strange fascination with the Midwest. I'm waiting to find out that my parents are actually from the Midwest. I grew up in Beverly Hills, up the street, and I just feel comfortable there. I've shot in Minneapolis, in Detroit, in St. Louis, in Omaha - they would say they're the Plains, not the Midwest - and I love it.

I want my movies to be audience experiences. As much as I like Michael Haneke, I'm not going to make a Haneke film. That's just not in my DNA.

'Alien' asked ground-breaking questions about eco-politics and female empowerment. 'The Matrix' delved deeper into the concept of perception versus reality than perhaps any other film I know. But for some reason, we tend not to remember the significance of their writing.

I'm too big a fan of rhythm and editing. I'd much rather my editing be brave than my shooting.

Humanizing good people is kind of boring and I don't really see the value in it... humanizing tricky characters is exhilarating, and making audience films out of indie subjects excites me.

And as a director, you make 1,000 decisions a day, mostly binary decisions: yes or no, this one or that one, the red one or the blue one, faster or slower. And it's the culmination of those decisions that define the tone of the film and whether or not it moves people.

Being the son of a filmmaker, you are aware of a career as a director. You don't think of it as just movies, but as a life.