My first cut was three hours and 17 minutes. And then I just became very shrewd about the editing.

Graduates, I'm asking each of you, at some point, to act up, be misbehaved. Buck the system. Fight for what you believe in. This is the time to do it. You're the ones to do it. Your world, is like no other generation, you actually get to create the world that you can imagine.

Artists have always been the front line; that's part of our responsibility. But a lot of the big actors come out, they get slammed, and then they retreat.

Trying to find the story within the story was hard. Filmmaking is such a reductive process in a strange way and you keep whittling away to what is essential.

I always like having kid energy around. I think it's good for a movie, even when you're doing dramatic stuff.

That was an interesting aspect: to go to war with the Church to fight for the very thing that the Church was meant to give to people.

People say funny things all the time during really serious moments in life.