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There's only one movie in my career I've had regrets with cutting it shorter, and I think some scenes maybe I shouldn't have cut.

The long version of the play is actually an easier version to follow. In all of the cut versions the intense speeches are cut too close together for the audience and the actors.

I come from a TV background, so for me this more like doing a freeing theatre piece because we'd go into a room and do the scene, instead of doing it as a wide shot, medium shot, and close up with only the odd line of dialogue.

In the past I've worked with directors who saw very much their scene in their head and knew exactly how they were going to cut it.

I think it's much harder to have a long dialogue scene than an action scene. An action scene is long, but it's not really hard. It's kind of boring, really. It looks good at the end, but to shoot it, it's not the most exciting thing.

When you make a movie, you do it so piecemeal. You're doing it, not only scene by scene, out of order, but shot by shot, line by line. And there's this idea that the director has the whole thing in his or her head and they're going to somehow weave it all together in the end.

It's rare that you cut out something that is really good. You screen all of it, and when the audience doesn't respond, you cut out whatever is holding the story down.

The cutting room is where you discover the optimal length of the movie.