Initially with The Butcher Boy, there was this kid growing up in this strange, weird environment that I remember from when I was a kid. And Patrick's vision was so complete there.

The truth is that seals look more like dogs. And I'm surrounded by seals because I live by the sea. They're odd bloody creatures. Not fish, they don't have gills, they should have legs, but they don't. They're the weirdest things, you know?

Well, I suppose I'm interested in ways of storytelling and in stories that are about storytelling.

Hollywood always chooses young and beautiful men and throws them into enormous, highly expensive toy-like movies, and I think sometimes it's hard for the maturity of the craft to emerge in that kind of glare.

The most difficult thing is the organization of people and the expression of your intentions. It's very easy to have a picture in your head and to imagine that you've told everybody about what you need.

My conception of it was that in a normal film you have a story with different movements that program, develop, go a little bit off the trunk, come back, and end.

I do enjoy working with writers.