My dad was this sort of avant-garde guy who did all kinds of weird things. He was a true original and anybody who met him never forgot him.

I don't get a sense of American pride. I just get a sense that everyone is here, battling the same thing - that around the world everybody's after the same thing, just some minor piece of happiness each day.

The films that I love are very straightforward stories, like really old-fashioned stuff.

It felt like the first thing, but when I first started out, I got a job adapting a book by Russell Banks called 'Rule Of The Bone.' I didn't do a very good job. I didn't really know what I was doing in general, let alone how to adapt a book.

It's a gamble you take, the risk of alienating an audience. But there's a theory - sometimes it's better to confuse them for five minutes than let them get ahead of you for 10 seconds.

But I'd be lying if I didn't say that every time you go to make a film, you're desperate to either do it better than you did it last time or to not repeat yourself.

Film school is a complete con, because the information is there if you want it.