You don't have to patronize your audience, and you can mix art and commerce in a profound way. You can simultaneously play to the sophisticated, 60-year-old theatergoers and to 4-year-olds.

I am, to be quite honest, sick of hero stories.

You just have to throw fear out the window. If there's anything that's going to hold you back, it's fear.

Learning is about much more than science and math. Doing theater, music, and art in school really helps children's minds grow because they're using different parts of their brains. Parents who care should insist on that.

It's how you tell the story that makes it new. That's what artists do. They let us look at the world from a different perspective. They let us look at birds in a way that makes us never see birds again in the same way. That's why I don't think computers are healthy for kids. They're too literal. You pop a button and a bluebird comes out. You pop another button and you can take the color blue and shove it into the outline of the bluebird.

I believe that if you really have a strong idea, you can say, "What do you think? Let's see how my idea plays off yours."

Directing is much more psychological-it's a lot like being a general. And you have to be organized. While you're making a film, you have between two and 500 people asking you a billion questions.