I really feel that actors should really know who they are as characters; they should really study their lines; they should be prepared; but once they come to set, for me the most exciting way to shoot a scene is to really find it, really kind of grind your way through it, until you feel like you have something that you can put together.

I mean, you always hope to have a part on every level, on every layer. For us it was very much a conversation about power and sexuality and brutality. And really all the issues that are in that world, in that space, come down to one word, which is "masculinity.

It's not a big secret that what's lacking and what's wrong in our society starts with education.

Another option, which I think is the thing that makes more sense, is this fact that the police are a reflection of the occupation of certain neighborhoods and certain parts of cities that are designed, basically, to keep the bottom down and basically maintain the status quo, but out of sight, so that the other side - the people in power, the people with money, the people with comfort, the people that are living in the "safer" areas - are sure that they can sleep safely in their bed while bad thing are happening to people and it's not their problem.

So the only problem that you have is actually switch things in the department, changing things, controlling things, putting it maybe under federal supervision, and if you fix the department, you'll fix the problems - with police corruption, with brutality, with evidence tampering, all those things.

I think that's an incredibly overwhelming reality that is really at the basis of how we're going to deal with this. Looking at the film, people will say, "Oh yeah, you're criticizing the police." I say, "No."

All the scenes that have to do with the fact that, at the end of the day, we're all engaged - hopefully some of us - in certain causes and ideals and certain ways of living, but we're human, and we're making all these mistakes, and we're caught in particular systems - whatever it is - but ultimately, there's a price paid by the people that are closest to you.