“I love life. I’ve always fought to live. I am happy every day that I have an opportunity to do new work or find new work or experience something...
“Radical self-declaration is really taking the time to feel and think through who you are, what’s important to you, and really embracing the worst...
“The way people commit to Air Force One, Die Hard, Sigourney Weaver in Alien—I want them to commit to me. There is no closet in the studios filled...
“I am the people’s comedian. It took all of us to get me here. Growing up poor, they tell you things like, money doesn’t make happiness—let me see...
“I want to be taken seriously as a force to be reckoned with. What I can offer creatively feels open-ended and limitless. I care about real people...
“I do love the activity of writing, which is very different from editing. Editing is a social thing that you get right or you get wrong. It’s an...
“Something in me wants a sense of not having control. Some actors want rituals to really feel on top of things, but I’ve always loved not having that...
“Shooting a film is really enjoyable because you are present—beat by beat, shot by shot, moment by moment. I’m more present on set than almost any...
“I go into a movie with a certain set of conscious ideas and things that I want to communicate. A story I wanted to tell, a character I wanted to put...
“To invite someone into your home feels very intimate. It’s like a fast track to intimacy, in a way that nothing else really is. People’s memories...
“I think a lot of films are love/hate letters to the place you came from. Shaun of the Dead is about North London where we lived at the time, Hot...
“One of the things writing can do is get to the pain. All of us have pain; you can’t live a human life without it. Much of that pain is very deep and...
“Making your own life fodder for your own art… there’s something very fundamental about that. You have to make that leap mentally and think...
“There has always been this interesting dance happening between men and the way that we array ourselves, what we put forth into the world through our...
“I work with the best materials I can find. In today’s world, quality has decreased in everything—from food to movies to clothes. I’m determined to...
“I see the film as this extraordinary creative expression that Mary Bronstein had to get out. The story is not even linear; it’s very abstracted and...
“Performance is fleeting. I like acting, and part of what I love about directing is that I love performance. There’s something incredible about...
“Either writing and books are powerful, or they’re not. And if they are—and I’ve argued that they are—then the era made in The Case for Reparations...