The way I survived growing up in Jersey City was by being funny. It wasn't by being tough. Nobody thought of me as a tough kid, except for the kids I beat up.

After Cannes every year, I end up going to some foreign country I've never been to before and introducing myself to a new religion - I'll go to Bali and research Hinduism, or I'll go to Thailand and get another tattoo from Thai tattoo artist Ajarn Noo Kanpai.

People love destroying mankind, for some strange reason. You make a movie about mankind's destruction, you're going to fill seats. People just love the idea. For a couple thousand years, we've been dreaming up how we're all going to disappear and fade away from this planet.

I knew nothing about the independent film industry. I didn't know much about the industry itself. All I knew was how to watch movies, how to enjoy them, how to hate them, how not to like them.

I went to business school but left after four months because I just didn't want to be a puppet of society, stuck in an office, craving some sunlight.

I just never felt like I belonged anywhere. I always had a stick with a little knapsack attached.

The egos in this industry are incredibly vulnerable and everybody's afraid to wipe out. So everybody plays it safe and everybody tells everybody else how great they are.