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.

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.

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.'

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

You get very little from the studios anymore, it's all independent. And I think the studio, with the exception of something like The Social Network, a fine film, very interesting, but as for studio pictures, that's it, what else? There was more only a few years ago. So it changes, and I'm trying as much as I can.

Anybody I'd spoken to who'd been in Siberia said 'would you please put mosquitos in your film,' that's what everybody knows about, they're big and they're nasty.

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.