It's the opposite journey from what I've usually done with films. I find it very easy to go from, say, a lit, pleasurable environment, like what you see outside there, to a very dark place. But the opposite journey, which is what this movie takes, is much more complicated.

If movies have to satisfy every possible quadrant before they're even made, they're dull. You only get great things when people overreach themselves.

Ireland is becoming like everywhere else, but that's the one I grew up in: the one that's hugely illogical. Rather wonderful, in a way. I never found this oppression of religion and that, but I did enjoy growing up in a culture that didn't need to be rational all of the time.

For example, the character of Claire in In Dreams wasn't imagined enough by me. Annette Bening is a great actress, and she gave a great performance, but because I hadn't fully written it essentially the character wasn't finished.

It's nice to work with Hollywood because there is never any question of resources put at your disposal to make a film as long as it is the right thing to do.

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.

I don't know why anybody would come to Ireland chasing a dream or even employment - that's an extraordinary thing for a place where traditionally one was unemployed. For 10 years, people were coming from all over the world looking for employment here, kind of an extraordinary phenomenon. That's stopped now.