I really spend as long as I can sketching everything out and working on the structure before I sit down to type out scenes.

I just don't think CGI is up to manipulating the human face yet. I feel like you can get away with it with aliens or monsters or something that's intentionally foreign, but I have yet to see anything digital to do with the human face that doesn't just look ridiculous.

I do love science fiction, but it's not really a genre unto itself; it always seems to merge with another genre. With the few movies I've done, I've ended up playing with genre in some way or another, so any genre that's made to mix with others is like candy to me. It allows you to use big, mythic situations to talk about ordinary things.

My filmmaking background has really just been making movies with my friends since I was 12 years old. That's how I feel I learned how to tell a story visually, by just going out with a video camera and making movies with my friends and family.

With 'Brick,' I wrote the script when I was 23 and didn't make the movie until I was 30.

You go from these high hopes when you're writing to just a desperate want of not making a complete fool of yourself by the end of it.

Showing your movie to an audience... it's like your kid doing a piano recital. 'Just let it not fail. Please.