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.

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

At eleven I was at the peak of my creative powers: I was writing stories and playlets, putting together poetryprojects. I was absorbed by my 'work.' At twelve I was no longer reading or writing, just counting off days and checking them off. I was interested in survival.

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.

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.

I love working with actors. I do.

So much of what a pet is about for us is that it becomes a vessel for yearnings, dreams, illusions, hopes and so forth. It's a projection of the ultimate innocence and purity. That's why it's hard to see a dog in its dogness. That's why, when some harm comes to a dog, it's much harder for an audience to deal with that, more so than dealing with harm that comes to a child or anything human.