I would say try to tell stories that you care about as opposed to stories that you think will sell.
I’m a huge freak, and always have been. I spent the first part of my life trying really desperately not to be one, and it was just a waste of time.
I’m a Buddhist, so one of my biggest beliefs is, ‘Everything changes, don’t take it personally.’
Directing is physically exciting because there’s a ticking clock, you’re working with people, it’s very social, it’s very enjoyable.
I think the world is a place for oddballs and freaks. I’m only interested in oddballs and freaks as characters.
I believe forgiveness is possible for everybody, for everything, but I’m a Buddhist.
Happy relationships are boring. We all want them in our own life. But I don’t want to watch them on TV.
We live in a time where there’s an alienation factor. There’s a certain disconnection. We don’t have any real sense of community anymore.
I guess in America we’re so sold on this ideal of the perfect, well-adjusted family that is able to confront any conflict and, with true love and understanding, work things through. I’m sure they do exist, but I never knew any of them.
Life is too mysterious to try to map it out. I’ve certainly lived long enough to know it will take you places you never thought it would take you – and some of those places are kind of wonderful.
I’m aware of ‘Twilight,’ but I’ve never seen the movies or read any of the books. Frankly, the story leaves me cold – why do a vampire story about abstinence?
I need to feel like the work I’m doing is not necessarily important, but meaningful, at least to me, because otherwise it just becomes a day job. It just becomes factory work and I get really frustrated.
Television viewing has become for me a completely different experience, because I don’t watch shows on a weekly basis. I wait until the DVD or I TiVo everything and wait until the end of a season and watch it all over a weekend. For me that’s a really satisfying experience, like reading a book.
A lot of times, the choice of the right song will save a scene. Or there will be a scene that’s a little flat and you put in the right song and somehow it just comes alive.
I always choose to look, as much as one can, at the supernatural not being something that exists outside of nature, but a deeper, fundamental heart of nature that perhaps humans have lost touch with. It’s a more primal thing than perhaps we are attuned to in our modern, self-aware way of life.
It’s a lot harder to find fault with the mundane details of daily existence when you really, really know on a cellular level that you’re going to go, and that this moment, right now, is life. Life isn’t what happens to you in 20 years. This moment, right now, is your life.
As a culture, we are not comfortable with mortality. We do not accept it the way other cultures do. We cling to youth, and we don’t want to die. It’s like, ‘Well, too bad, we do.’
The ego is kind of a big, unwieldy thing. It’s not so easily tamed or subdued.
We live in a patriarchal culture. It’s okay for women to be objectified but not for men.
There is a fetishization of victimization in our culture. And I just am not interested in victimhood.