I wanted to be a director first to protect my writing. I'm a playwright and you don't need to protect your writing when you're in the theater because everyone's there to protect the writing. When I had an idea for a film that I really cared about as my own, I wanted to direct it, and then I immediately became interested in directing in and of itself because it's such a deep art. You suddenly have all these tools at your disposal to tell the story.

I would love to take control of the entire universe and for five years you give every movie the same widespread distribution no matter what movie and see if there's a real discrepancy between people coming to see science-fiction films or superhero films. I seriously bet there would be no discernible difference.

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.

I like to let the actors work the way they want to.

You can shoot a film in New York without seeing the Empire State Building. Or Starbucks...although the latter is much less realistic.

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.

Some actors really like to do only a few, some like Casey [Affleck] will do as many takes as there is electrical power. At some point, you'll say, "Listen, I think it's really good." And he'll say, "You sure? You sure? There's not some other way we should try it?"