It's not enough to bash in heads. You've got to bash in minds.

When you're making a film, you have an obligation to fill the frame with life.

I went to Berlin and Warsaw and Kraków to do research. Right after we got started, I had already booked this trip, so I went. Seeing the history and the posters, and hearing from the guy certain phrases and words and images, it's stunning how much they're playing from the handbook of the little mustache that isn't Chaplin. With Rudy Giuliani as Mussolini.

I don't write just to be clever. But sometimes I do. And if you don't have an understanding of the language, then the way in which it's bent doesn't actually register. It's the old you-gotta-paint-like-them-before-you-can-paint-like-you thing.

I describe television as feminine and movies as masculine, in the sense that television wants to examine a problem from all sides and talk about it for a long time, and movies just want to hit the climax and then maybe have a smoke.

It's very important that we start creating new content again. We can only build on nostalgia so much before we have nothing left to build on.

Kristen Stewart is kind of captivating; she can just stare at stuff and it works because I still want to watch it.