Part of living is understanding where the fringes are. Once you know how far people go, you can say, "Well, here's how I choose to represent myself."

Well, even to this day, if I smell a Big Mac, I'm like Pavlov's dog. My mouth starts watering immediately, like, 'Man, that is so good,' but I can't take a bite of it.

What I love about what digital entertainment has done is that they've given real creative freedom to folks like myself who are doing really groundbreaking stuff.

I think that I'm pretty much who you see onscreen. Are there times when I ask questions of people and have a sense of what their answer may be? Sure. I think that you can't deny that. But you still want to hear from that person, even though you may anticipate what they may say. I am as natural right now as I am when I talk to somebody in the Middle East. It's just trying to be a real person to them. So long as I can be as honest with myself when I make a movie like that, I can continue to be honest with you.

Film is such a powerful medium. It can really affect change; you can affect so many different people in different ways.

When I experience something or feel something, that's kind of transferred to the audience. There's a lot of great breakthrough moments that come out of that.

By what you decide to put on your body, for example, you're already making a personal judgement. That's an incredible thing that happens...we set our own standards even before we walk out the door. Most of the time, those standards are self insulting. Most of the time we belittle ourselves, because we can't have the things we think we're suppose to have. That's what we've bought into.