My directing style is long takes. The longer take I can do, the more I can think of not doing it in cuts, the better.

I'm from that world where I feel so comfortable making small independent movies.

I like to write in a shroud of secrecy because I have to keep finding ways to scare myself.

I wouldn't describe myself as a do-gooder. That's really more my wife. I'm kind of just the obsessed guy who's been writing and making movies since I was a little kid, just in a room and make it.

As a child, I probably knew phrases that other children didn't known, like "pitocin drip" or "myocardial infarction." Some kind of knowledge was always in the air. My parents would always talk about science at the dinner table, saying something about this patient or some other patient. So I guess for a nanosecond in early high school, I thought about going into medicine.

See what you have to ask yourself is what kind of person are you? Are you the kind that sees signs, sees miracles? Or do you believe that people just get lucky?

There's no staying where you were. If you're not doing anything, your skills and point of view are atrophying.