I write from my stomach.

Crazy is so hard to play, there's nothing you can really tell an actor.

I really subscribe to that old adage that you should never let the audience get ahead of you for a second. So if the film's abrasive and wrongfoots people then, y'know, that's great. But I hope it involves an audience.

You write who you are. But you also cheat, and youwrite what you want to be. It's embarrasing to be the guy who madethe movie, knowing you're not exactly who you want to be.

It's so hard to do anything that doesn't owe some kind of debt to what Stanley Kubrick did with music in movies. Inevitably, you're going to end up doing something that he's probably already done before. It always seem like we're falling behind whatever he came up with. "Singin' in the Rain" (1952) in "A Clockwork Orange" (1971) - that was the first time I became so aware of music in movies. So no matter how hard you try to do something new, you're always following behind.

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

My older sister was at the cusp of new wave, and I had older brothers from my father's first marriage who were rock 'n' roll guys, so I was exposed to a lot of popular culture.