I like to address the fears of my culture. I believe it`s good to face the enemy, for the enemy is fear.

I think the important thing about staying creative and staying sharp and original is not to look back too much.

I'm having a reputation of being somebody who will not be crazy. Not descend to doing drugs and spending an enormous amount of money, and instead delivering a product to people. Something they can sell and recoup their money and make a profit.

People who are kind of at the cutting edge of life and survival, and being near the nitty-gritty, like my films, and I like that.

I have felt over the years a definite progression or arc from feeling guilty about what I had done with the first one [film], because certainly there was all that fundamentalist guilt that came pouring back in.

The experience of going to a theater and seeing a movie with a lot of people is still part of the transformational power of the film, and it's equivalent to the old shaman telling a story by the campfire to a bunch of people. That is a remarkable thing, if you scream and everyone else in the audience screams, you realize that your fears are not just within yourself, they're in other people as well, and that's strangely releasing.

But I made him the Deputy Secretary for Homeland Security because that added an element of political espionage.