My favorite sci-fi always uses its hook to amplify some bigger theme or idea - some emotional thrust.

I bristle a little when the argument for film gets put into the nostalgia ghetto. Film is still the highest quality and best-looking image capture medium available. I don't think it always will be. The digital image will get better, and it will eventually surpass the quality of the film image, but it isn't there yet.

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

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.

You come out of each movie just thinking, "God, if we can fool them into letting us make just one more, we can get it right."

Game of Thrones' is just incredible, what they pull off every week.

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.