I'm always a little unnerved when I see a show that's set in the past that implies in any way that things were nicer then.

I just find it annoying that in these sequences [of the fight scenes], traditionally, there's music trying to pump you up. I don't like that, personally, as an audience member. This just reflects my taste.

There are people who are originals and the stuff they make really is new. It isn't based on anything else. But I've decided I'm not that-I was never that. My abilities are to synthesize a wide range of references and ideas into something that feels relatively unified and coherent.

The muscle memory of filtering away all the wrong versions of what you're doing improves the more time you're on a film set. I feel like my problem-solving algorithm got kicked up a notch.

People are sort of numb to watching violence, but sexual activity is still as strong as it ever was in terms of generating response.

Making a film that's supposed to be fun to watch is really hard - that's the weird irony of it.

I've begun to believe more and more that movies are all about transitions, that the key to making good movies is to pay attention to the transition between scenes. And not just how you get from one scene to the next, but where you leave a scene and where you come into a new scene. Those are some of the most important decisions that you make. It can be the difference between a movie that works and a movie that doesn't.