You never want to make a "message movie," but you always want to be talking about something that you care about.

The fanboy community can smell in an instant, like smelling fear, when something was tailor-made in order to reach them as a demographic.

The momentum of production keeps you from giving up, so it's really the editing and writing phases where things can look bleakest.

If I spend a year and a half writing a script, the first year will be outlining in notebooks. It's just the way I work, definitely not necessarily the best way.

Back before 'Brick,' I wrote a short film that I never ended up shooting: hit men in the present who work for a mob in the future who send their victims back in time. A guy is sent his future self, he lets him run, and the whole short was them chasing each other across the city. That sat in a drawer for 10 years until after I made 'Brothers Bloom.

All of us have that feeling of some deficiency from our childhood. I think that's a universal thing.

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