It's been an obsession of various genres, disciplines, and aspects and elements of movie-making. It's always been something that I've really aspired to, so doing something new and different, reinventing myself and working with new people is just the passport to the amazing world that is the movies.
Every new project I do is a new invention of myself and reinvigorates me as to why I love the industry.
I'm not really worried about people's perception of what I do, or people's analysis of why I make the decisions I make. I wake up every day with a new interest and a desire for an education.
When you say "Holy Man", I immediately think of Eddie Murphy's finest hour. If it's anything comparable, I'm excited.
I'm not a director that's about precision and control and perfection, I'm about creating an atmosphere that's organic and interesting and then letting people loose, and for that there's no greater actor or performer than children. Animals are maybe a close runner-up.
I really strongly feel that when you approach a drama, you have to approach it with energy, honesty, sincerity, and absolute commitment, or don't do it.
I've always had great independence on everything I've done. Nobody's ever told me not to do anything.
I've never wanted to be a fireman, in my life. I've never really wanted to grow up and be anything other than a film director.
Sometimes in the studio movies I've been working in, you'll put a joke in a movie because the crowd loves it - not because I love it.
I saw how you could get away with such a free-spirited, naturalistic sensibility in a mainstream Hollywood movie, and you could apply a lot of the skills of the '70s icons that I really admire to a contemporary, commercial movie.
Sometimes you'll have great actors who aren't comfortable with improvising. Which can get pretty frustrating. But every actor's coming from a different place and they have their own strengths and weaknesses and your job is to sell them as two people in the same world. Some of them have to have their hands held and some I just let loose entirely.
A lot of my best friends are the best person for the job in a film, but sometimes being a filmmaker I'll give a buddy a chance to prove himself. Other times I want to go with a tried-and-true person. It can absolutely cause problems.
Everybody's got their tools or their instruments, and it's fun to see how people expose themselves to their profession or their profession becomes who they are.
I never really had a real career trajectory idea. I just like a lot of different kind of movies, I wanna make a lot of different kind of movies, and to some degree you follow opportunity and to the other degree you have to create your own opportunity.
I love animals. With animals you never know what you're getting. Everybody says don't mess with animals and little kids in movies but those are the funniest things because you can't be in control. I like to lose control as a director.
With Hollywood you're yesterday's news if you get a flop at the box office. So you might as well be braced to have something else to do that's interesting. Have something lined up to keep your stories fulfilled, and your ideas, because if you're just cranking out movies three times a year.
Sometimes an actor doesn't sell an idea 100 percent. It just sounds like something that's coming out of their head. You can hear the gears whirring and they're trying to think of what the smart approach is to getting a line across.
Fortunately, working with Universal was just a real opportunity of a supportive entity, who not only financially backed and distributed the movie, but creatively collaborated with us, and gave us ideas and creative ways to make a movie that was budgetarily responsible.
The people that I associate myself with are people that are looking to make a good product because it's going to benefit them and it's going to help launch their careers.
It is better to develop ideas with friends rather than the usual route of having a great idea and throwing it out into a production, and being surrounded by professionals who've been doing their jobs for years.
I always cast people with a sense of humor because people that are super serious don't understand when I ask them to eat a booger it's not necessarily about that. It's about something more. It's about inviting a little bit of absurdity into the process and humanity into the process. Making sure that no matter who we are and what sort of pedestal or glamorous lighting we're under, we're all eating boogers man.
I live part-time in a cabin in Colorado up in the mountains and part-time on a ranch in central Texas - but do I really know how to go brand a cow, or do I really know how to go rappelling down a cliff? No. I do the recreational, half-assed version of all these manly activities and then try to keep that kind of Zen masculinity, like, "I'm a man of nature."
There's something within contemporary culture which is far more faux masculine than it was when men were really men.
I've protected my protracted period of infancy. For many years. And I have no desire to become an adult.
Sundance [festival] is all your Hollywood buds and buddies and rolling out and high-fiving and "Hell, yeah. Here comes the movie," and in Venice, it's very elegant, and respectful...It's decadence. It's such a fun way to formalize a movie that is for us a down-and-dirty, gritty movie. And to see it with the red carpet, and rolling up in a Maserati.
