Toronto Film Festival is one of those festivals where there are 400 movies, and unless you have a distributor who is super confident and puts a lot of money into it, sometimes movies can go unwatched or unnoticed.

In a movie, you're raw material, just a hue of some color and the director makes the painting.

I would literally climb out of the cradle while my parents slept, go and crawl off. I did this a couple of times apparently. I'd cross the road and into someone's house, wake them up banging pots and pans in the kitchen.

I realise how important it is to use the time I have. I respect people who want to do that by watching television. I happen to want to read books. But I know I can't read all the books or watch all the movies in one lifetime.

It doesn't take that many years for a kid to realise that they're going to die. It's always there in the back of their mind the rest of their lives.

Even the implication that The Lord of the Rings is a mythic story about Western, white supremacy - regardless of the political leanings of anyone who tries to make that case - is a load of self-justifying, destructive horseshit.

We all experience many freakish and unexpected events - you have to be open to suffering a little. The philosopher Schopenhauer talked about how out of the randomness, there is an apparent intention in the fate of an individual that can be glimpsed later on. When you are an old guy, you can look back, and maybe this rambling life has some through-line. Others can see it better sometimes. But when you glimpse it yourself, you see it more clearly than anyone.