There's no story if there isn't some conflict. The memorable things are usually not how pulled together everybody is. I think everybody feels lonely and trapped sometimes. I would think it's more or less the norm.

Kids are always open to anything. It's very rare that a kid isn't extremely eager to make you happy.

If I have ideas, I want to put them in the movie. It's not a minimalist approach at all but I feel like it's for the audience. It's about seeing how much texture we can give it and seeing how many things are there for people to latch on to... I just want to do it the way I want and I feel like it won't be helpful for me if I start worrying about that. I just have to follow my instincts. Everyone is going to respond differently to it and everybody's right - that's their point of view. That's how the story intersects with their lives.

People seem to think that my movies are so carefully coordinated and arranged - and in a lot of ways, they are - but every single time I make a movie, I feel that every director makes these choices. You make choices about your script, you make choices about your actors, and how you're going to stage it, and how you're going to shoot it, and what the costumes are going to be like, and in every single detail, you make that decision. And for me, what ends up happening is, I wind up surprised at the combination of all these ingredients. It never is anything like what I expected.

Mostly with commercial work, it isn't about personal vision. It's not a personal effort, it's work for hire. That's more my attitude with those. You just want to be a professional worker.

Some of the ideas are kind of inspired by the songs, and I always want to use music to tell the story and give the movie a certain kind of mood. That's always essential to me.

I would like to do a movie in space, but I think it would be difficult to do it on location.