It's only when you look back sometimes and you look at some people in your life and you're like, Oh my god, there was something so pure about that. The thing that kind of bugged me, maybe, is the thing that's so unique.

I think when you're trying to get a film together that's had a long gustation process before I came on board and was trying to get financed in various stages, sometimes you're trying to make it more friendly to the financial interests or the commercial interests of various parties.

People define gay cinema solely by content: if there are gay characters in it, it’s a gay film... Heterosexuality to me is a structure as much as it is a content. It is an imposed structure that goes along with the patriarchal, dominant structure that constrains and defines society. If homosexuality is the opposite or the counter-sexual activity to that, then what kind of a structure would it be?

I would just say there are no two roles that are more demanding than Bob Dylan of 1966 [Blanchett's role in 'I'm Not There'] and Carol Aird of 1952. I challenge any director out there to come up with a wider divide. I had to convince her to take the Dylan role, and that took effort. But with 'Carol,' she was already attached.

We're the end of the baby boomers, and we participated in many social changes. Who would of thought, for example, when the AIDS epidemic came along that so many would die, because it was gay people dying. And what emerged was a grassroots movement that developed, and succeeded in getting things done. The pinpointing of that movement evolved into the changes that we have today.

Feminist theory has left an indelible mark on my own critical—and creative—thinking . . . For me, everything I questioned about what it meant to be a man – and how much my sexuality would perpetually challenge those meanings—could be found in arguments posed by feminists. What can I say? I identified.

Nostalgia could be considered a disease because you're living now.