Much of directing [a movie] is not directing but just listening and being present in the moment and just keeping your eyes open.

Even if I had $200 million, I’m very wary of overusing CGI. I think it’s a great tool and it can be used really effectively, but I feel like it does tend to be overused and especially in sci-fi stuff.

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.

That's part of the appeal of time-travel movies: The notion of going back and fixing something.

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

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.

The only advice I can really give to the young filmmakers is to be persistent, don't give up, and keep watching and making as many movies as you possibly can.