I'm sure some people will say, 'Why do this?' And my response is, 'Why wouldn't you?' The film business in general is using a model that is outdated and, worse than that, inefficient.

I want to form a political party that's based entirely on what music people listen to. To me, it's a much better barometer of what they think and feel than their political stance.

The brief flashbacks are sun-kissed, summery and optimistic. It's the only place in the movie you will see red, yellow, orange, or any vibrant colors.

I'm mystified by the stuff that doesn't work. I'm mystified by what's going on in the critical side, too. Stuff I like is getting trashed and stuff that is being praised I think is terrible. I don't really feel in sync with what's happening, but at the same time, what I think keeps me afloat is that I try not to be, and don't want to be, very indulgent. I try to make the films as lean as possible, and to not spend a lot of time crawling up my own ass creatively.

The ought to be a worldwide cultural taskforce that just stops you when you have ideas like combining The Red Desert with an armored car heist movie.

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.

When a film like Chris Nolan's Memento cannot get picked up, to me independent film is over. It's dead.