Acting is many things. Acting is playing lines, of course, but it's much more profound than that. Acting is truth-telling, and trying to find the truth in a human situation, which will be sketched out by a screenwriter with all the skill that a screenwriter can do; but in the end, that's just the map of the journey. The actor's job is to divine and embody the truth, and find it.

I think when you think of my films, I think hopefully you think of an extreme sort of real unfolding, real-time, performed, feeling semi-improvised, you know what I mean, all that.

There's a film you write, there's a film you shoot, and there's a film that you cut - and they're all different.

That's one of the central challenges we face - how to stay true to events and compress the fundamentals.

Acting is many things. Acting is playing lines, of course, but it's much more profound than that. Acting is truth-telling, and trying to find the truth in a human situation, which will be sketched out by a screenwriter with all the skill that a screenwriter can do; but in the end, that's just the map of the journey. The actor's job is to divine and embody the truth, and find it.

In the end, it's acting, it's not real. But every director will tell you that you have to create conditions that create tension, because tension is what makes drama feel real.

All directors make films in individual ways. But the classical kind of view of filmmaking is that you have a script and it's very linear.