Whatever I was able to do with those experiences certainly contribute to whatever I'm able to do as a director. The corruption in that is that most of what I acted in the last 10 years was to steal film school time from these guys. Those were the people I thought I could learn from as a director.

My greatest interest in it was certainly not to avoid those things that were going to be controversial about the family but the interest I had in the story was predominantly what he was pursuing and not as much what he was fleeing.

Reputations are maintained by the outside world, and they're created by it, too, by and large. And they serve as a hell of a device for privacy, because the more people look for something that's not there, the less chance they have of violating who you are. It's like going out there with a mask on, without having to exercise your upper body to put it on.

I'm not going to have a better day, a more magical moment than the first time I heard my daughter giggle.

I get a little scared of words like maturity.

You need governance, but you also need a middle class, you need agriculture, they need to be able to export. I think that's probably the biggest issue, the job creation that could come with the kinds of things that Haiti has all the potential in the world to export.

I've been a road-rat since I got my driver's licence at 16, so I've probably gone across America 20 times.