My only obligation is to my characters. And they came from where I have been.

You know what the funniest thing about Europe is? It's the little differences.

I don't have any bone to pick with critics. In fact, if I wasn't a filmmaker I would probably be a film critic. Most of my bone is I would be a better film critic than most of the film critics I read.

Emotion will always win over coolness and cleverness. It's when a scene works emotionally and it's cool and clever, then it's great. That's what you want.

You get to be analytical about the process and now I can watch the movie and see all the different connection things and see all the things that are underneath the surface.

I felt no obligation to bow to any 21st Century political correctness. What I did feel an obligation to do was to take the 21stCentury viewers and physically transport them back to the ante bellum South in 1858, in Mississippi, and have them look at America for what it was back then. And I wanted it to be shocking.

L.A. is so big that if you don't actually live in Hollywood, you might as well be from a different planet.