On the set I make jokes I can't get too involved, or it turns into sentimental soup. I try to keep it light.

The difficulty, then, is when you create a church, an institution, and you create a dogma. When you create an ideology, that's the danger. Communism, too, is a beautiful idea, but millions of people died when communism became an ideology.

To be perfectly honest, I think that as I'm growing older, I'm just growing more impatient. I'll be very happy if at some point people say, 'Michael's grown wiser and softer in his old age.' But we'll have to wait and see what my next project is.

Unfortunately, you're helpless when people interpret your work wrongly. There are simply people who can't or won't understand or accept what you're trying to do. When you take the risk of expressing yourself in public, you have to open yourself to that possibility.

It’s harder to write a story with just two people in a room than with 50 characters.

I never use soundtrack; it is always part of the story.

Of course I am a child of European culture. There are a number of great directors from which I learned, but there is nobody in particular I got inspired from.