Early in my career, people wanted to pigeonhole me as the bad guy because I'm of Italian-American descent, which they often were when I started out. You have to fight against it. One of the things that helps is the ability to do comedy.

I was always attracted to the past as a kid.

I'm pretty much a character-driven film director and my movies are smaller. I don't do a lot of coverage. I use lots of master shots.

Even The Impostors, as silly as it is, is a very intimate film, in a way.

Every character, no matter who you play, at times is pretending to be somebody else. People have a public face and a private face.

I don't like to move the camera that much anyway.

Ripe bananas are the mark of a good produce section. A good produce section is the mark of a superior grocery store. A superior grocery store is the mark of a good man.