It's a harder time to make original, less conventional movies. But God, we need them!

Growing up, movies were something my family and, later, my friends and I would stay up all night talking about. The movies I remember moved me and forced you to think about things that made you know yourself better.

Movies, as I grew up loving them, were always about something.

There is nothing that is so serious that you can't also see its comic side. Comedy is a way of talking about the most serious things.

It's hard not to want to become Ken Burns at times. I'm interested in being a Ken Burns who reaches that 17-year-old who goes to the multiplex just to see a good story well-told. And if there's history in it, all the better.

Yes, illness is serious, but the indignities are also funny. And that defines my world view.

There's a rising tide of concern among activists, economists, and artists about Africa. Theres a temptation to think of it as a monolith as opposed to all these different countries with different problems.

Anorexia is pernicious and not something which goes away overnight.

When my own son was 12, we didn't want toy guns in the house. So he just picked up a stick and went, 'Bam! Bam! Bam!' That's the testosterone of a 12-year-old boy.

The issue of diamonds in Africa is inseparable from the issue of child soldiers.