Casting is everything. If you get the right people they make you look good.

I don't have a formula. Every time an actor wants me to hold their hand, I hold their hand. If they say, "Stay," I say "Okay, respect." You know? "I'm right over here." A kid, if I need to give a line-reading, I'll start acting out the part for the kid and just mimic the kid. You know? Whatever it takes.

What makes me angry is the idea that people would be going to a movie because of what I said about it. It makes me feel, I don't know, arrogant, self-important, self-aggrandizing, whatever. Like I'm being used.

It is true that the movie is perhaps my most politically-charged. The story is thrust into motion by the idea of what do you do when your 13 year old daughter comes home pregnant. And not only is she pregnant, but she wants to keep the baby.

I've always said that I myself am not the best audience for my own work, because I'm just not that receptive to comedy.

That is definitely a misunderstanding between me and a part of my audience. To be honest, I am often unsettled by the responses some people have had to my movies, and that includes many people who like them.

Some directors hardly talk to the actors at all.