My mother did an incredible job - one, of just being a great mom, but two, of instilling a tremendous amount of empathy into me as a young man, as a young person. My mom was kind of this collector of people; throughout my childhood, it didn't matter who you were. She was a high school counselor and then a junior high counselor, and she didn't just counsel students, she counseled other teachers and administrators and coaches.

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.

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.

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.

The more we can be honest about ourselves as filmmakers, than the more we can be honest with people who see the films.

More than a billion adults worldwide are now overweight - and at least 300 million of them are clinically obese. Childhood obesity is already epidemic in some areas and on the rise in others. Worldwide, an estimated 17.6 million children under five are said to be overweight.

I think most Muslims are incredibly upset with the state of America's foreign policy today and the state of the world.