I don't think Muslims do hate America. I think that's what we hear and that's what we believe. I don't think that's true.

Film is an oversimplification of things. That it really boils things down and makes them too simple.

One of my beliefs as a filmmaker is that if you can make somebody laugh, you can make them listen. With laughter, you can get somebody's guard down, you can open them up to listening to you. They don't feel like they're being preached to or talked down to. I think it helps, it makes really hard to understand information a little more accessible and palatable. And at the end of the day, it makes a movie a little more fun. It doesn't feel so heavy handed.

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

Ultimately, if you want to make movies, you've got to want to make movies every day, when people are paying you to make movies and when they're not, because you're going to get a lot more no's on this business, no matter what it is, than you are going to get yeses.

I don't know. I have incredible amounts of hope that things can change. It takes people who believe.

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."