Various studios are still shooting on film with digital grain and the DI negatives, it's not ideal. We should really be all film or all digital. But that being said, the old way of graining in the camera, now you can make changes like a painter. It's dangerous because you can ruin the film, you can over-fiddle. We've all seen films and gone 'what the hell is that?'

Ed Harris seemed to be as a man, it seems, like a Clint Eastwood, this country is one that has produced more than one of this kind of man that's iconic and enormously appealing to the world, as part of American film culture.

In terms of how I work with actors, having worked so heavily on the script I have a very clear idea of the characters; they are reasonably well illustrated in the script. If you cast it right, to a great degree you can hand it over to the actor and I just make suggestions. I'm not the kind of director who needs or wants to get into too much finessing. Ideally, when you hit the set, you have this conversation, like, 'eh, what did you think?' 'I don't know, what did you think?' 'Why don't we just try it again, make a few physical changes.'

There's almost a fear that if you understood too deeply the way you arrived at choices, you could become self-conscious. In any case, many ideas which are full of personal meaning seem rather banal when you put words to them.

It doesn't take any imagination at all to feel awed

Well, all these stars have their houses swept quite regularly by people who work in the surveillance security business. They come in and they look for bugs and things.

The best conversation with Stanley Kubrick is a silent one: you sit in a theatre and watch his films and you learn so much.