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It's just hard to get an independent film made.

Movies are usually difficult, often insane, constantly challenging and always strangely amusing to make.

It's rare that movies can sort of capture the tone of life; movies always feel like they have to be one thing or another.

I've done a lot of independent films that not a lot of people have seen.

To make independent films, you can't think about them too much, ponder on them too much, get overwhelmed by the enormity of it.

But 'Memento' was so successful, such a huge cult hit, almost on the scale of a large film. If that had happened, with all the acclaim, before the next job, I'd have found it very difficult to figure out what to do next.

There's a strange sense of accomplishment in making an independent film. Everything's against you; there's no time, and even less money - you bring a bottle of glue, chip in twenty bucks, and hope you all make it through the day. If you manage to finish it and it actually turns out to be pretty good, it's thrilling.

A film has its own life and takes its own time.

I think that those are the things that you can uniquely do with film that are difficult to do anywhere else: they can bring a picture to life, give it a natural and historical context and make you feel that everything else is suddenly credible.

I think independent movies are actually very challenging right now, because it was this huge scene and it was great for a few years. Then, it was totally co-opted by the studios. Now, it's become very corporate, the independent scene.