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I am a cynical optimist. Big opening weekends are like cotton candy. The films you will remember over time are the films that stick in the consciousness of the audience in a good way.

Movies are getting more and more expensive to distribute. You need a lot of money to get people into theaters.

So much of selling a film in the industry is about creating a fulcrum where all the pressure comes to bear, and something seems suddenly valuable and approved by an audience. It's amazing how people could pick up tons of films on the cheap, but they don't because they wait until everything is laid out for them.

The stakes are high on every film now because there's the opening weekend. The first week is extremely crucial; increasingly, films are being judged in terms of opening day, opening weekend, then first week. People are going berserk promoting their films.

On the movie side of things, the difficulties come with so few movies being made, and when they are, it seems that it's a marketing game. Story sometimes takes a backseat to that one grand marketing idea.

The thing about movies these days is that the commerce end of it is so inflated and financiers are just expecting this enormous return on their investment.

I don't think a lot of people realized that piracy is out there, and it's not a Disney-esque or Johnny Depp-esque type of thing.

I got to learn from the American audience. Hearing what it is they're not getting. These are audiences, 35 to 40, an older demographic that controls seven to 10 trillion dollars. And the producers and distributors have convinced themselves this group doesn't go to the movies.

And that's another reason to make this movie: We can put plays on film now, at a relatively small cost, and they will reach an audience they would never have reached otherwise.

The amount of piracy is extraordinary. People don't realize how big it is.