I don't read books on how to write screenplays just because I'm stubborn. So it's all sort of made up.

Film is a collaborative process, absolutely, but I am a control freak.

I don't believe that narrative works when it's trying to teach a lesson or speak a factual truth.

I got a degree in math, from not a good school in Texas, and then I went to work as a software engineer. Just not glamorous at all.

As a viewer, that's work I respond to - work that I know is singular in some way. If I'm being challenged by something on screen, if I don't quite know why it's happening, I want to know I can do the work of pulling it apart and that there'll be something satisfactory about it. If the architecture is sound, you can be lyrical in execution.

I love to work. It's the idea of having someone else tell you how to make your film or how to sell it - that's the part I can't really deal with. I would rather do 1,000 things that are work than deal with one thing that's a political problem.

I never got into 'MacGyver,' but 'All the President's Men' and 'The Conversation' were big for me.