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Writing a film is like building a brick wall. You have a plan, and you have the blocks. Then, somebody says, 'I think we'll take this stone out of here and put it over there. And while we're at it, let's make this stone red and that stone green.'

There aren't many American directors here trying to direct a Japanese yakuza film. When you combine that with the fact that I don't speak much Japanese and this was an independent film I was financing myself - people were curious about what I was doing.

For actors, when you first get the project and you see that it's a Steven Spielberg, Tom Hanks and Gary Goetzman-produced project, right away, from an acting standpoint, you go, 'Wow. That'd be great to be part of that. What a career move that'd be.'

The way we work at Pixar is we write the script, but then we quickly move on into story reel, which is basically like a comic-book version of the film. And then we do our own dialogue and music and sound effects, all in an effort to be able to basically sit in the theater and watch the movie before we shoot it, essentially.

In the future, everybody is going to be a director. Somebody's got to live a real life so we have something to make a movie about.

I wish I could create an IMAX film that would make my work accessible to a broader audience.

I still don't know much about directing a movie.

I know I'd like to direct a film at some point, and maybe I'll write it.

You know that you're part of a Spielberg production when you've got some aliens involved, but you really know when you're sitting there at a table read, and they say, 'Steven really wanted it this way.'

To direct a genuinely animated film, you're really having meetings and discussing what you want with animators who then go off and produce one shot at a time that you look at and comment on.