A movie takes on its own life, and you have to respect that and be open to it.

What's most insidious about MTV is that it commodifies precisely those things that young people believe are subversive. In other words, subversity itself has become a commodity. It's all a way to trick young people into believing that there's something unique about what they do, but this is all completely a corporately designed maneuver.

Part of it has to do with this business of being approached in public. I have a distinctive look - it's partly the glasses I wear - and people seem to remember me once they've seen me.

I always have to presume that each movie is my last movie because I never know if I'll get money again.

I love working with actors. If you cast the right person in the right part at the right time, they make you look like a better writer and director than you really are.

There are a lot of ideas I have that I think would be very marketable and commercial, but they're not as compelling to me as the ones that are unmarketable, uncommercial, and unprofitable.

I think there are many advantages to not knowing any of my prior work. The narrative threads, I think, are totally accessible to anyone who may never have heard of me. There's a beginning, a middle, and an end - I don't think there's going to be any confusion there.