My strength, if it's anything, is that I can lure some big-name actors in. That's probably the strength of almost any director now. On your own, as a director, you've only got so much weight. James Cameron, George Lucas, Steven Spielberg, Michael Bay... that's about it. Everybody else depends on the star power that they can draw.

There was a perverse side of me, with things like Van Helsing coming out. I didn't want to go down that route.

I'm overwhelmed by writers. Most people aren't impressed by writers, but if you can draw a cartoon or a picture, they think you're magic.

John Cleese was with a group called Cambridge Circus, who had come to New York, and we became friends. Years later that produced a certain team effort.

I'm trying to escape by forming my own kind of world. Basically, I'm trying to encourage others to do the same.

The forces that run the world always try to keep things under control. The population might be having a wonderful time, buying iPods and going to nice restaurants, but I still feel they're all kind of under control.

Nooo! Leave that to George Lucas, he' s really mastered the CGI acting. That scares me! I hate it! Everybody is so pleased and excited by it. Animation is animation. Animation is great. But it's when you're now taking what should be films full of people, living thinking, breathing, flawed creatures and you're controlling every moment of that, it's just death to me. It's death to cinema, I can't watch those Star Wars films, they're dead things.