I'm an enormous Tim Burton fan.

I had written a script called 'Freed,' which I had wanted to direct.

The friends we have, these are choices that - unlike family, which we have no choice in, and I love my family, thank God - we've given ourselves, to some degree.

I had heard about the nightcrawling world, and I'm very aware that there are tens of millions of young people around the world who are facing bleak employment prospects.

I'm often stunned when I come up over Mulholland, and I'm looking down at the Valley, and I can see for thirty miles; I can see the mountains, or all the way to the ocean.

I moved to L.A. and watched a lot of local television news, and I started to see the burn logos up on the upper right hand corner - On-Scene Video, RMG Media Group, and all these other ones. I just became intrigued with it.

It's the reality: film is a director's medium, and, ultimately, they are the ones that are in charge, and you have to respect that because somebody has to be in charge. But, yeah, you do reach a point where you want to have your voice come out.

Coming out of the '60s and the Vietnam War in America, it was commonplace for people to make films that had relevance to them. And since the '70s, cinema has gone almost entirely in the direction of spectacle and escapism and superhero films.

The spirit of L.A. is untamed wilderness. It's earthquakes and wildfires and oceans and mountain lions and fog. There's great physical beauty.

I spend most of my time in a room alone where eight hours go by, and I have no sense of time. I work seven days a week, and I live in this sort of vague subconscious fog a lot.