I have really good female friends. I've never bought the whole men-and-women-can't-be-friends thing. I think that's sort of nonsense.

I learned a lesson which I didn't heed: Don't put yourself in your movies. It's too much.

I've always been attracted to ensembles. When I started doing plays in high school and in college, I always loved the community aspect of it. I loved these little families that would develop.

The reflexive allergy to L.A. that a lot of New Yorkers have, I feel like it's kind of nonsense.

I'm a little less hungry as an actor than I used to be. When you're a director, you're the conductor of the orchestra, and when you're an actor, you're playing the violin. There's a thrill to each of them, but as the conductor, you get the fuller sound.

I'll say this, and this has nothing to do with gender or sexuality: You do not want to get licked in the face repeatedly by another human being. You just don't. It's not pleasant.

And as a filmmaker, I'm trying to unhook myself from this idea that unless you have a brilliant, long, enormously lucrative theatrical run, that your movie somehow failed. And I don't believe that.