I don't call cut between the takes - it's my way to help the actor keep focused. As soon as you say 'cut' you have 10 people jumping on them and everybody's trying to do a great job, and they do, but sometimes they forget that the more important thing is the performance, creating the performance.

I don't mock things, which makes me more vulnerable to mockery myself. If you're cynical, you're protected from mockery. But I have to be nice. I don't think I have irony. A sense of humour, yes, but not irony.

In a way, putting actors deep into this sort of complicated universe frees them from thinking about who they should be. They just are somebody.

If you take a child from South Africa and you put them in Boston, they're going to speak with a Boston accent. And so, that's a way to see the world as everybody is equal, not as a result of politics, but as human beings.

The problem is when you get forced to use ideas that aren't good. When I can filter the ideas and use the best of them, I am happy to collaborate.

The MTV Video Awards were never about the video, but about the song. Most of the time it was just to glorify people for the wrong reason.

It's very hard to say I'm surrealist. It's like saying I'm poetic. It's not something you want necessarily to be aware of.