The best set was probably 'Bloody Sunday.' We had no money for extras and gambled on months of outreach to persuade the people of Derry to turn out and march for us on one single afternoon. And they did. In their tens of thousands. Seeing them march, their patience and their dignity and their commitment, I knew the movie would have a quality of truth.

If you're sitting around thinking what other people think about your work, you'll just become paralysed.

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

Surprisingly, I don't throw away that much. I don't move forward with a lot of things unless they're going somewhere. You also have to remember that when you're working with other artists, you have to be really careful about how you deal with that stuff.

Anytime you've got something that can take you into the political realm then you've opened up the conversation a lot.

I grew up mostly in the South, and there's definitely something about the South that's different from the North. When people ask me where I'm from, I say Louisiana. I spent more years there than anywhere else.

The key is, how do you feel with the one asshole? They cannot be talked to. That's why they are assholes.