I had this whole issue of doing a crime film in the 2010s. The genre's been mined very, very heavily. Post-Scorsese, post-Tarantino, post-Guy Ritchie, what do you do? I wasn't attracted to pulp so much as all of a sudden I had a pulp problem. I had to find a way to make this interesting, because there's a lot of crime films that come out on VOD every week, and a number of these star Nicolas Cage.

Words are a completely different form of expression. The word P-E-N-I-S is an entirely different form of communication than a photograph of the same thing. H

You know, when you're in your twenties you use a great deal of symbolism. You somehow think that a character standing beneath a cross is more interesting than a character standing underneath a billboard, but when you get a little older you realize that there's not much difference.

Screenplays are not works of art. They are invitations to others to collaborate on a work of art.

Because many of the films I've made have had an intellectualedge, it's harder for me to lie. It's harder for me to go to peoplewith money and say I don't care about art, all I care about iscommerce; all I really want to do is make money.

That's just my disposition - to create a situation where you have to come up with something.

Let's just shoot in black and white. Don't explain why. Have no reason for it. Just do it because it's interesting.