The best adaptations are the ones that really excavate the material. The movies that work are the ones in which somebody very smart figured out how to take all the thematic material, all the character material, all the filigree, all the beautiful writing and put it into a story.
If you have the ability and the wherewithal to create work that's basically in a discussion with the culture we're in, how could you not want to do that?
Years ago when I was at Fox, I was the executive on 'Raising Arizona.'
That's my goal, to feel like I've done the best I could. When I've done that, anything else that happens is a bonus.
Anybody who understands how a movie gets made understands that a deep-pockets player is not going to make a movie that has anything defamatory in it without protections.
I love work. I love putting together a group of people who are all doing the same thing. The commonality of purpose.
I was once a fairly angry person.
I want to make serious work that engages with serious subjects. I'm very lucky: I get to more or less make what I want.
I know that movies are basically meant to be entertainment, but I'm not that interested in entertainment.
I always loved doing a movie with Daldry. That's always a huge factor for me.
They say there's no second act in American lives. There's something there worth exploring. Giving up an idea of yourself, examining your failure, and seeing if that failure was the system's or yours. What does it mean to not turn out to be the person you want to be?
I loved doing casting because I love actors, and I am very conscious of what actors do. But I always wanted to be a producer.
Classics stay alive because a great actor or a great director wants to do them.
