I love a chance to shoot real locations, because in films in the earlier days before people traveled as much, it was exotic to see a film set in Switzerland, and that area has been taken over by CGI, mostly, and fantasy landscapes. It's unusual to see this much landscape, people say it's old fashioned. So what you're referring to is there was that period in the '50s and '60s when there were epics and you saw landscape.

With war and famine and flood and special effects films, when you do somebody under duress, you have to be really be inventive and the risk of keeping it very simple is you might loose some of the audience because it's not overt, it's hidden, not coming at you. Then you might cut through to some of this numbness and reach something profound and tragic.

I'm not from a theatre background, I'm wary of rehearsals. But what I do like is hanging out together, on location.

It's spiritual, a man that has a past and regrets, but you can as a director take a shot, and there's something in the eyes and the face, you just can't fake it, you can't teach it, and I think Ed Harris has that quality.

I love stories and I don't like to repeat myself. And I look for new stuff, and as they say it gets harder.

You can mix in certain sensitivities as a filmmaker.

I carve stone. I've got hammers and chisels and I carve from sandstone. I just did a big mural of birds and trees.