That whole Deep End experience of finding yourself with the dead body: you know you didn't kill it, but you know if you're found with it, you're gonna be done for it, so you have to get rid of it. And that's a really important nub of Young Adam — Joe knows for absolute certain that if someone comes around the corner, that's it. Nobody's ever going to believe what happened. So that has nothing to do with identity or sexuality, but that is a link. I'm just fascinated by it.

Archetypes are always [in my film-making]. It's sometimes interesting to just flip them a little bit and see the underside.

Eleven years is a great length of time to prepare a movie, it would be wonderful to have 11 years of funded preparation.

We're filling a big universe [in Doctor Strange], and so the look and the sort of plasticity of us is really important to us when we're striking poses here. It's very important, it's really great.

When I'm in northern Italy, I walk about feeling slightly less of a freak.

How do we identify ourselves, and how do we settle into other people's expectations for our identity?

The work is different in the sense that I haven't had to travel round the world raising money, or work from the genesis of the project. But the collaboration feels clear always, it's sort of my drug, I'm in it for the conversation. The conversation's the most important part of it.