I lost a friend I was blessed to have. My thoughts are with the family of President Chavez and the people of Venezuela.

The major studios are by and large banks, and they give you what is by and large a loan to make a movie. Like banks, they want their money back plus.

I don't see myself as a different guy than I was ten years ago. I don't have aspirations to be. It's really about where you're putting your energies. That's changing a lot.

I'm a huge Woody Allen fan. Good movie, bad movie, it doesn't matter - I just like his movies.

I can't imagine being quite as lucky at any other time - I certainly never have been before. That goes right down from my producing partners to people like Eddie Vedder. But the two things that make me feel that this was meant to be now and not before was that the story itself has more resonance today - I find it a more important story today than it was then - and Emile.

It's a foreground of my feeling. That place moves me. And I don't mean my country; it's part of our shared natural world that happens to be particular to a sense of wherever my storytelling inclinations come from and my own history of kind of being a road rat and travelling.

I don't read newspapers too much , just because they tend to make me feel I have a political obligation that I think is a distraction from what my political offerings are going to be if I just make my movies.