There's something about taking a film from concept to script, through production, and then to see the final thing happening in the edit phase. It's almost like a miracle in the making.

It took me a long time to film the plastic bag, and then I had to get the cut of the scene right. But if you find it as beautiful as the character does, then suddenly it becomes a different movie, and so did he as a character.

I wanted to keep exploring... I'm not about to choose a series of movies in which I can use the same bag of tricks and style that I used in the first film.

I deliberately, in a way, went for something that was a huge challenge and was a big period film. I was excited about the canvas on which I could tell the story as much as the story itself.

One of the reasons I loved working with Tom is people feel they know who he is... I think working with an actor who the audience already has a relationship with actually helps you in a film like this.

People don't know where to place me. Terry Gilliam used me as a quirky cop in 'Twelve Monkeys', and then he hired me again to be an effeminate hotel clerk in 'Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas'. Another time, I was shooting this indie film 'The Souler Opposite' and six days a week, I'm playing this big puppy dog, then I come to the 'NYPD Blue' set and become this scumbag.

TV's hard work. I don't know how the hell Angela Lansbury survived doing 'Murder, She Wrote' all those years. And sure, everyone wants to be Bruce Willis or George Clooney - they want to be in film for the range of characters you get to play.

I like black and white films. I don't exactly know why - probably because there is a stylization which is removed from actual life, unlike a color film.

By drawing or exposing two or more patterns on the same bit of film I can create harmony and textual effects.

I have tried to preserve in my relationship to the film the same closeness and intimacy that exists between a painter and his canvas.

Unless it's done superbly, as in the Japanese film Gate of Hell, color can be a very distracting element.

In any art movement, the art has to move into a new phase - a filmmaker has a desire to make a film that is not like a previous film.

Take a film of Jacques Tati like Mon Oncle which has something quite new - for me, unique - in it.

Film is changing, and it can't help but keep changing.

Working on the film really made me confront my opinions about change and gentrification.