The best way to know when there's good lighting is when you don't notice it.

As an actor, Sean [Penn] is brilliant. And he's really an excellent director, as well. We got along really well.

Some movies are what I would call murky. Just because it's murky doesn't make it artistic. It makes it hard to see.

You used to feed a piece of celluloid into an editor. [Digital] is not expensive and that is an advantage, but I must say that I don't love it.

If you do not bother to take the time to compose and to light properly, then you end up with something almost less than reality. You end up without the soul, the heart, the art of the moment.

I shot a lot of commercials and sometimes I enjoy the commercial shooting and sometimes I really hate it, but in thirty seconds or one minute, you can make some remarkable work shooting in one or two or three days.

The studios are never going to make $200 million a picture with those types of movies. It's not familiar to them, and it's not a model that can necessarily be sustained. Now, if they go back to making movies about people ... well, I hope they do that.