I feel like everything I make is personal to me.

I think the way kids create is so inspiring. They're drawing a picture? They love the picture they drew; they're not tortured about it.

I feel like everything I make is personal to me.

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.

I think at the beginning of a project, you decide if you're in love with the idea and what it's about, or what you think it's about at that time at least. Then you commit to it, and once you've commit to it no matter what, no matter how many self doubts you have, you're in it. The ship's sailed, you can't turn around.

Music is thousands and thousands of years old and I don't think that basic, primitive connection to the language of music ever changes.

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.