Don't differentiate between 'This is a job' and 'This is what I'm doing for fun.' It's all simultaneous.

If I leave my phone in the car and go to dinner or something for a few hours, I'm very proud of myself.

You have to be involved and relate to the characters in order to make a film that is true emotionally.

Finding a kid that could be introspective and internal and thoughtful, and then also be wild and free and guileless and physical, it was hard. So at the end we started getting down to panic time, and we still hadn't found our Max. And we decided to go about it a different way. We said, "Let's just find friends of ours that live in interesting cities in the country that maybe aren't as big, and people that don't do casting." And thinking maybe you find a place that has an artistic community, maybe we'll find some interesting kids from there.

I always aspire to that, where it feels like the film was made by the characters as opposed to the filmmakers. I try to be invisible.

Be willing to get fired for a good idea.

Chris Cooper I got to work with many times.