The day you step on the floor the meter is ticking and time is of the essence. You can't really afford to not know what you're doing. So I think the screenplay is a great tool to get everybody on the same page.
I think you either have chemistry or you don't. If you could create chemistry in the editing room then there would be no films without chemistry, obviously, because there are a lot of good editors out there who'd be able to take care of that then if that's how it really worked.
I read a script or I read a project or I read a novel and I know that I'm going to spend two to three years of my life with that, exclusively. So you better like it. There better be an honorable, real need to make that movie.
The screenplay is a great document because it makes you have many discussions prior to actually being on the floor.
It's not like you get up in the morning on the first day of shooting and say, 'I'm so smart today I'm going to determine every choice I make from now until a year and a half from now.' So it changes. You gain insights. The movie bucks you.
I'm not looking for artistic license with the script. I tend to arrive at a form with the script and feel that that should be for the time being what we aim for.
I went through a pretty serious illness early in my life and I made a movie about that.
I'm very eclectic in terms of what I like, what I read, what I watch, my own consumer behavior.
I have a family. I'm married. I'm very, very happy. I wanted to make a movie for my wife and a movie that speaks to what it is to be in a long term, very, very committed relationship because at the heart that's really what it is.
I think it's never mono-causal why you fall in love with something that you want to do.
The movie doesn't do what you want it do. It just grows and then you have a movie at the end of it, hopefully.
The choice that you really have is that you can go and work for TV which is so badly paid that you have to really churn them out which I think probably helps you develop certain muscles. I'm not sure though that you really want to have those muscles as a director.
