I take it as a sign of intimacy and friendship when you feel comfortable enough with someone to have a little rough and tumble.

When you have people like Casey [Affleck] and Michelle Williams and they want to do more takes you don't say, "Sorry, that's it." And I also don't like to say, "It's fine, it's great." Unless it's clearly there.

The world is really heading in a very dangerous direction, it becomes that much more valuable and important to go to the movies and see human beings that are human beings.

There's a few people who I've accumulated over the years who I really trust to show a first cut to and to be helpful rather than unhelpful.

I often find myself writing about people taking care of each other, or trying to. And often seem to write about situations that are too big for the characters.

Teenagers all think their life is a movie. If you break up with someone or you have a fight, you walk around with movie scores playing in your head. You sort of see yourself suffering as you're suffering. There's a lot of melodrama attached to the real events of your life.

I don't think fast enough on my feet in terms of the writing to change the script too much when I'm shooting it. I like to have it set and done and know that I feel good about it and I might add a few lines here and there while we're shooting, if I think of a new joke, I might toss it in, but for the most part, I try to stick to the written script and have all the latitude exist within that.