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.

Artwork can be a portal, a kind of rethinking and reseeing of the world as we live it.

I love working with actors. I do.

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.

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.

Art has a smaller audience than, say, movies or other forms of mass consumption. But that doesn't mean the work doesn't have an impact in a way that transcends just a few cultural arbiters.