In writing scripts now, having made a film, I'm much more conscious of what it means to shoot and edit a movie, and that affects the writing.

When I write a film, there's a particular thing I am wrestling with and the question or concern I'm dealing with has to be big enough for me to dedicate a year or two of my life. If the question isn't big enough, or rich enough, I'll lose interest.

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

We don't have a lot of space in our imaginations to allow people to expand what they do.

You know, I’m not saying, “Oh, because I play a good guy on TV, I need to suddenly be villainous in a movie.” I look at it more like: does this role has a kind of urgency for me in terms of, “can I not say no to it for whatever reason?”

You can say something that can really help and actor and you can say something that can really get in the way of an actor's performance, kind of cut them off from their instincts and really get into their heads. And every actor's different. Every actor requires something different. Being an actor, for me, was the greatest training to be a writer and director.

There's something melancholy about professors because they're chronically abandoned. They form these lovely relationships with students and then the students leave and the professors stay the same. It's like they're chronically abandoned.