Usually the audience has no idea that the censored version of whatever movie they're watching isn't the original.

There can be a blurry line between laughing at the expense of a character and laughing at the recognition of something painful and true. But blurry as it may be, it is nevertheless unmistakable, and sometimes the laughter I hear makes me wince.

I admit there’s an element of brutality in all my work - it’s part of the truth about human existence I always want to explore - but the last thing I’m trying to do is put on some kind of freak show, inviting people to get off on other people’s pain and humiliation.

I love working with actors. I do.

That said, be mindful, to someone who's never seen any of my work, it's just a movie with actors. So it's only those who of course know the earlier work that will see something is afoot, so to speak. But I don't want to intellectualize.

When I go to the movies, I do like to see things that surprise me, a little bit, in ways that seem truthful to the world that we live in.

So far, at least, I haven't found a way to tell my kind of stories without making them both sad and funny.