I aim my movies, as much as I can, at myself. I think that those movies have an interesting quality. They're very movieish. They are movie movies. Like I think Watchmen is a very self-aware movie. 300. Dawn of the Dead definitely. That's really where I've ended up.

When Reality is a prison, Your mind can set you free.

I imagine the film ["300"] as if I was a Spartan and I had never seen an immortal or a Persian, or an elephant or a rhino for that matter.

Reality's its own thing. And I'm not really into reality that much. I'm into this cinematic stylized reality that can comment on reality. It's like the most beautiful parts of reality and the saddest parts, but it's none of this middle ground.

The problem is, when you're making an animated movie, the studio has an illusion in their minds - and it's really not true - that because it's a drawing, it can be changed at any time.

I think I just have a natural operatic aesthetic. I can't help it.

don't mean to sound weird but I get so immersed in the source material when I'm working on a movie that I kind of lose the line between what I thought of and what was in the book.