To be honest the work that a producer does is work that I've done for most of my working life. It's work that I started to do, for example, when I worked with Sally Potter on Orlando. We developed it together over five years.

I've been on the other side of the table many times, trying to get people to be sympathetic to projects, and I've been the victim of that kind of intense kindness masking extreme stupidity.

Alexander Trocchi was an existentialist. He was looking at an alienated artist in the post-war period. It's modern because it applies now as well.

We're living in a new Beat time, in my view. And it's very difficult for us to hang on.

I am the only living person in the English speaking world who didn't have the Narnia books as a child.

I'm a huge Marvel fan and the fact that they take the liberties that they do in filmmaking I think, if anything, that it dignifies the comics and it says, "Yeah. This is a strong enough, robust enough source. We can bend it, it's elastic. It's bouncy."

If I'd been asked to play an Asian man [in Doctor Strange] I would've shown them Benedict Wong.