I've just always had a personal fascination with the myth of Abraham Lincoln. And once you start to read about him and the Civil War and everything leading up to the Civil War, you start to understand that the myth is created when we think we understand a character and we reduce him to a kind of cultural national stereotype.

I believe in 3D for certain kinds of films. I certainly believe in using 3D for all things in animation because animation has such clarity and so much depth of focus. It worked great with 'Avatar' because 70 percent of that film is animated.

3D needs a trained eye. It can't be done by everybody. People who just do 3D just for the sake of commercializing their movie another five or six percent and they don't know really how to do it, they should care how to do it better by bringing other directors and collaborators into their lives to help teach and instruct how you really make a 3D movie because it's not just like putting a new lens on a camera and forgetting it. It takes a lot of very careful consideration. It will change your approach to where you put the cameras. So, 3D isn't for everybody.

Technology can be our best friend, and technology can also be the biggest party pooper of our lives. It interrupts our own story, interrupts our ability to have a thought or a daydream, to imagine something wonderful, because we're too busy bridging the walk from the cafeteria back to the office on the cell phone.

All those horrible, traumatic years I spent as a kid became what I draw from creatively today.

Because of how much movies cost, it's dangerous to be experimental on one film after the other. But we can experiment with television. We can do things that are fringe and bring ideas to the table that are offbeat and original.

I think documentaries are the greatest way to educate an entire generation that doesn't often look back to learn anything about the history that provided a safe haven for so many of us today.