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I think, for me, Julian Schnabel set a great precedent in being able to cross over so successfully. I feel like his artwork is kind of big, grand, and bombastic, yet the films that he makes are very beautifully sensitive, and I just feel that his filmmaking sensibility is very different from his artwork.

Filmmaking is a real craft.

Working with David Cronenberg or Darren Aronofsky or even Steven Soderbergh isn't really like a typical Hollywood movie. These are true artists, and have a certain amount of freedom when they work, and they're more like independent filmmakers making their way through big studios.

Any time you talk about the look of the film, it's not just the director and the director of photography. You have to include the costume designer and the production designer.

I started directing videos at the same time that Michel Gondry was starting to direct videos, and I watched what he'd do. They all seemed to be pushing some new visual effects idea, but never just for spectacle. They all captured a feeling.

You have to give directors and cinematographers a word blueprint for visuals, but I had to learn that from experience.

John Schlesinger had one of his friends designing it and he had never done a film before. Ten days before it started, they didn't have any costumes. I was rung up and joined up.

Cinema is a visual language, and you're always looking for visual metaphors for things. You know, if I was writing a play about Howard Hughes, I could have him give a monologue about how he's terrified to touch a doorknob. But on screen, you know, working with Marty Scorsese in 'The Aviator,' that became the series of images that told a story.

Martin Scorsese is one of the great filmmakers of all time.

I found filmmaking to be a very practical art form. It's about figuring out how to create within the very practical limitations/constraints of time, money, and large groups of collaborators.