The more unique your film is and unusual it is and difficult it is the harder it is to get it financed. That's why a lot of good filmmakers are doing television. They do HBO movies.

I'm not one of those actors where filmmakers that I admire ask me to be in their movies. I meet them at parties and they're nice to me but they never ask me to work with them.

Other filmmakers make their movies and put them out and that's that. For me for some odd reason it goes deeper than that.

In anything I've ever written all the characters sound like me which I don't think is a bad thing. It makes sense. But I had always admired filmmakers who made movies that didn't sound like them at all.

I don't think people have been able to deal with the fact that African American filmmakers can make movies about life and relationships.

If the goal is to get the best artists actors and filmmakers in the world to create the best movies Hollywood does a decent job. And I think no one would disagree with me that it also makes a ton of bad movies and employs a bunch of hacks.

You can't work in the movies. Movies are all about lighting. Very few filmmakers will concentrate on the story. You get very little rehearsal time so anything you do onscreen is a kind of speed painting.

I hope people don't compare 2D and 3D because 3D's new it's unfair to compare to 2D which is really sophisticated even when we're jaded about it. 3D just began give it a chance let the equipment and projection system catch up and be better let the price go down let more filmmakers get a hold of it more easily.

Yeah it's odd when you look back at your own work. Some filmmakers don't look back at their work at all. I look at my work a lot actually. I feel like I learned something while looking at stuff I've done in terms of what I'm going to do in the future mistakes I've made and things at work or what have you.

It's a funny thing because you look at the careers of other filmmakers and you see them sort of slow down and you realize maybe this becomes harder to do as you get older. That's sort of a cautionary thing. I hope it doesn't happen to me.

I hope to continue my friendship with France and its filmmakers for many years to come.

Working with David Cronenberg or Darren Aronofsky or even Steven Soderbergh isn't really like a typical Hollywood movie. These are true artists and have a certain amount of freedom when they work and they're more like independent filmmakers making their way through big studios.

There's so many things I want to do. I want to work with great filmmakers great actors great scripts. And there's no reason for me to do anything short of that because I'm 24 I don't have a family I don't need to make tons of money and I'm not dying to get famous.

When I did 'E.T. ' it sort of solidified the only family I know are these film crews. These gypsies. These filmmakers. That was the solidification and the clicking revelations of 'This is what I want to do with my life and this is where I'm going to survive.'

Working with HBO was an opportunity to experience creative freedom and 'long-form development' that filmmakers didn't have a chance to do before the emergence of shows like 'The Sopranos.'

I was very inspired by Les Blank's film 'Burden of Dreams.' I think what's unique about his film and the two I've made is that they're close examinations of filmmakers and how their own emotional experiences reflect in the material they're rendering and vice versa - how that material sometimes colors their own lives.

It's up to the courage of the filmmakers to make art in cinema not just business. John was rejected by studios he borrowed money and did movies with his own money. You're either courageous or not. You have to find a way.

Perhaps it sounds ridiculous but the best thing that young filmmakers should do is to get hold of a camera and some film and make a movie of any kind at all.

My favorite laser disk ever was the laser disk for The Graduate which had a commentary track that wasn't even the filmmakers it was a professor some film criticism guy who just happen to be this amazing commentator who went off into the whole theory of comedy.