Before Sunrise did very well internationally. It made as much in Italy and Korea as it did here.

Hollywood has a way of sucking the world's talent to it.

I've never been a guy who had more than a toe in Hollywood anyway, so my toe is more easily lopped off than most.

There are a million ideas in a world of stories. Humans are storytelling animals. Everything's a story, everyone's got stories, we're perceiving stories, we're interested in stories. So to me, the big nut to crack is to how to tell a story, what's the right way to tell a particular story.

I worked offshore as an oil worker for a couple of years.

You make a film and you can't really pick the way it's put to the public. You control the content, but the way it's marketed, or the poster, or what they're telling the public about the film, it's beyond you. Some people don't even see them, because they think they already know it. That can be frustrating, when something you've done is marketed in a way you think is antithetical to what it is.

It's disappointing to see films become pure entertainment, so that it's not an art form.