If you're doing a music film, you've got to be singing about something.

I like finding a great shot and then just staying with it for a long time, not trying to pump things up with some kind of artificial energy by cutting.

I think music is just a wonderful ingredient that helps us understand a scene better. And certainly you can overuse music, and you can use the wrong music. I probably have been guilty of these things over time. But if you use music correctly as a friend of the theme, a friend of the narrative, ou can lend some terrific connective tissue to a film.

Documentaries - my God, there is so much going on in our country and in the world today that every time you open the newspaper or turn on the radio or watch the news on TV there is another documentary subject. We're getting the headlines for a second, shaped by corporate delivery most of the time, but what's really the story there?

When Silence of the Lambs did well commercially it was more than anything. My partner Ed Saxon and I were just so relieved that finally we had made a movie that had made some money!

Everything I've made - it doesn't mean they've all been good - but everything I've made so far, big or little, fiction or documentary, has been something that I've been really enthusiastic about.

Nothing beats a live performance. Nothing.