I can't please everybody and I don't try to. If I can please myself that's enough. For the rest, I just hope for the best.

Like everything, what compels one to put pen to paper is a great question.

In particular, people have trouble understanding where I stand in relation to my characters, and very often this gets reduced to me making vicious fun of them.

You try to make them comfortable so they can do what they're best at, and make them shine. You always want to make an actor shine. I'm of the mind that there's no one - you, your mother, anyone, that if in the right place at the right time in the right context, couldn't shine in a movie. And so if it means, "Oh, I have to make them uncomfortable," then whatever it takes to get what I need up onscreen. It's all in the service of the story.

You always have to be ahead of the audience so that they have to always catch up and know the movie's not quite going exactly where you think it's going, or expecting it to be going.

Compromise is part and parcel of making a movie. It's a question of the kinds of compromises that you have to make.

But anonymity is very important to me, and I don't want to be recognized in public more than I already am.