If you track something like a political campaign and parcel out what's being communicated in a literal and narrative sense, and what's being communicated by means of emotional and symbolic language, you might find that it's the latter elements that absolutely dominate and move people. It makes me want to take that language and expose it.
I am a tumbleweed. I don't have a company. I don't have a staff. I don't own anything - I've never owned a car or an apartment.
Adam Sandler in 'Punch-Drunk Love' is brilliant. Brilliant, brilliant.
I think baseball represents something closer to our experience. There's no clock in baseball; it's not over until it's over. It's like life in that there are prolonged periods of boredom and monotony, punctuated by intense moments of excitement and sometimes terror.
I really tried to get comfortable with the notion of shooting digital on 'Foxcatcher' and just couldn't. I shot many tests and experimented with all sorts of techniques to manipulate it into a place that worked for us, but it just didn't happen.
What I will say - one thing that is attractive about getting a real film made within the studio system is that studio systems, with their marketing and distribution, have real power.
There is a very uneasy relationship between money and creativity, between money and almost everything. Its tendency to control and corrupt - whether it's in arts or education or politics, hardly anything is untouched by it. Journalism certainly is up there. Everything is susceptible to it.
There's always something happening in pretty much every moment of every scene of everything I've ever worked on in longform that's not being expressed or acknowledged.
I think Will Ferrell is probably completely evil, the darkest of them all. He is known among comics as the dark knight. An evil, evil man and a dangerous soul.
I like to rehearse. We did a lot of rehearsals for 'Moneyball,' but it is really individual to the actor. It's not like, 'Here is my process, everybody. Fit in.'
I am attracted to these outsider characters who just don't belong anywhere, and who are operating in worlds they sort of don't fit, coupled with huge ambitions.
You make a movie and you'd like it to be appreciated, respected, embraced.
I think I am missing a gene that most people have to enable them to feel happiness about success and these kind of things.
I think I approach things with an outsider's perspective.
I don't believe in God in the way I often see described by religion.
For me, personally, the value of a film is not determined by a review, but the health of the film is.
A film cannot make it into the culture without the support of critics.
I want to work with performers who really are ready to lose their minds, you know? People who are established and have talent, but who are ready to break new ground and really be cracked open in a new way.
People are attracted to entertainment, for sure, or jokes, excitement and romantically heightened stories that might be false, but are still attractive fantasies.
It's great making a film and having it embraced and seen. I really enjoy that.
