Editing feels almost like sculpting or a form of continuing the writing process.

You can be moderate in a way and still intense in your views. It's the extremism that gets frightening; religious fundamentalism and wacko-left liberalism is crazy.

And I taught acting for years, and without knowing it that was the real thing that started bending me toward directing.

Making a film is a way for me to understand what it's like to be a murderer, to confess, to be a beaten wife, to be a minority, to be a victor, to get the girl, to lose the girl. I can do all of that through the practice of an art form.

Relationship films are political. If a woman is sitting in a waiting room in an office and a man walks in and sits down, it's a political situation. If he decides to smoke, does he ask her or does he just light up? If he lights up, what does she do? It's politics.

I see my job as trying to entertain you, to be balanced in some way, and morally responsible. I don't want to glorify a killer. I don't want to glorify a rapist. I don't want to do those things, but on the other hand I don't want to lecture to you, either.

If we were a primitive society, movie stars would be gods.