The purpose of satire has been rightly stated as to strip off the veneer of comforting illusion and cosy half truth, and our job, as I see it, is to put it back again!
There are loads of sociopolitical, racial, class and future-planet situations that really interest me, but I'm not really interested in making a film about them in a film that feels like reality because people view that in a different way. I like using science fiction to talk about subjects through the veneer of science fiction.
You feel a certain way in a glass or concrete or limestone building. It has an effect on your skin - the same with plywood or veneer, or solid timber. Wood doesn't steal energy from your body the way glass and concrete steal heat. When it's hot, a wood house feels cooler than a concrete one, and when it's cold, the other way around.
With every product, the delta between the brand and the reality determines its power over the minds of consumers, and with Trump, that delta is always broad. If Trump said it was the best, it was average. If he said something was the finest, it typically included a spray-painted gold veneer.
There is certainly a longstanding idea within western culture that civilization is only a thin veneer. As soon as something happens, say a war or a natural disaster or an epidemic like we're going through right now, the worst comes out in each of us.
I like extreme situations: people pushed out of their comfort zones; the civil veneer stripped off.
Maybe there's a sort of veneer of optimism about U.S. comedy, whereas perhaps in England, we don't mind ending it on a sourer note.
I like to show subjects inside a sealed veneer. There's a sense that you can't get in.
What happened with Hurricane Katrina was the American electorate was forced to look at what lay behind the veneer of chest-beating. We all saw the consequences of having terrible government leadership.
What matters is discovering myself under the veneer, under the layers that are wrapped around me. There are two 'yous'; there's 'you', the real you, and then there's the image.
