Sometimes you make very interesting movies that aren't meant for everybody. But this is a capitalist society, so everything conspires to put value on whether it sells or not.

If you get stuck and it feels a little stiff, then you do have to mess it up to find it. But other times it's really written and you just stick to your guns and do it as elegantly and as concentrated and as committed as you can.

I was doing community theater, and I was always interested in acting, but I was also interested in sports. I was interested in a lot of things. I was a pretty normal guy. I wasn't like a guy who grew up in a dark theater watching movies.

I like the idea of sitting in a theater with a bunch of people. With technology now, people are getting more and more isolated. I like the community coming around the story. You don't have that with a DVD. People go home, they're tired from work, they can turn it off. It doesn't make you commit the same way, if you can control the movie. More difficult movies, it's too easy to turn them off. All the time, I see movies I know if I had seen it on DVD, I wouldn't have hung with it. If you see it on the screen, you hang with it and it pays off better than a movie you can easily sit through on DVD.

Sometimes I think women are lucky because they can develop in ways men can't. The old-boy network may be oppressive to women, but it actually stunts men in terms of personal growth.

Mounting those red stairs [in Cannes] is something I've done with a very different intention many times. So it's interesting any time you witness those shifts of perspective. The beach scenes were also fun. It felt very strange and very theatrical to kind of commandeer it and have La Mer booming over the speakers.

I want to work with people who are good at what they do, and people who are passionate.