I remember somebody saying to Joel Schumacher about one of his Batman movies, 'Isn't that over the top?' ... And he said, 'Well, nobody pays to see under the top.' I wish I could just say that. But I think you learn something when you go to extremes.

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.

But when you're writing a script - for me anyway - you have to sort of create an enforced innocence. You have to divest yourself of worrying about a lot of stuff like what movies are hot, what movies are not hot, what the budget of this movie might be.

It's the movies, stupid. That's what we've been saying all along.

The filmmaking process is a very personal one to me, I mean it really is a personal kind of communication. It's not as though its a study of fear or any of that stuff.

The idea of a mass audience was really an invention of the Industrial Revolution.