Studios are attracted by making money, and they're also trying to simplify things, going with the genre thing. The gambling instincts of a few years ago where you might make some thousands or a few hundred, it's nothing now.

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

If I can't make the kind of film that I want to make, then the hell with it.

I became obsessed with the true stuff, and that led to shaping 'The Way Back' screenplay somewhat toward a minimalist style, to avoid free-hanging moments, and to hold the music back, so it would never lead you to an emotion, and to try to make the emotions as real as I could.

I don't know if there will ever be an ideal way of selling an original picture. Because everything you're doing, you're inventing.

Silent films were, I think, more different than we know to sound films. We think of it as simply that we added dialogue and in actual fact I think it was an entirely different art form.

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