So yes, I hope to act in other people's movies, big and small, ...

So yes, I hope to act in other people's movies, big and small, because that's how I make my living, really.

I don't like not being busy.

I'm a control freak. Totally.

I never go overbudget on my movies.

I was dissatisfied just being an actor.

I wanted to be an actor when I was a kid.

You gotta make the movie you want to make.

I was always attracted to the past as a kid.

I write in the mornings. During my down time.

The thing is, I'm a very practical filmmaker.

I like to see how I can do it for less money.

I would rather just do the things I want to do.

I don't like to move the camera that much anyway.

I'm not interested in wasting money on a project.

I wanted to be an architect, an artist, or an actor.

I'm not saying they won't be bigger projects someday.

Big Night and The Impostors are both things that I wrote.

I like to use all of myself, and acting wasn't doing that.

I've always considered myself an actor first and foremost.

I love directing - it's always so involving, so challenging.

I mean, Scorsese's a genius, and that's one way of shooting.

I'm actually one who will encourage directors to cut my lines.

I think everybody has a little bit of an asshole inside of them.

If you feel safe then you can go wherever you want to go as an actor.

When I write a screenplay, and when I direct, I always pull lines out.

And I love doing my own projects; that's what I've always wanted to do.

A dream that you don't fight for can haunt you for the rest of your life.

Even The Impostors, as silly as it is, is a very intimate film, in a way.

The majority of directors I've worked with didn't know how to talk to actors.

People wear shorts to the Broadway theater. There should be a law against that.

I would love to have my hair back and to be two inches taller - I am 5 ft. 8 in.

Sometimes we all make relationships more complicated than they necessarily have to be.

I'd read Up in the Old Hotel, and I wanted to do something with Mitchell's stuff for a long time.

I have consciously not taken the role of a gangster, which has been offered to me far too many times.

As a film director I like to have the actors create their own close-ups. It's an older style of filmmaking.

I think it's important to have a good sense of humor and joke around with your kids. That's what I do a lot.

Sometimes it's difficult directing yourself on film because you can't quite separate yourself from the subject.

If you find that thing you love, it doesn't necessarily matter whether you do it well or not-you just need to do it.

Sometimes you can't even find the director on a movie set. Sometimes you don't want to find the director on a movie set.

As a director, I also get to sit and watch actors and learn from them in a way that I don't get to do when I'm just acting.

Every character, no matter who you play, at times is pretending to be somebody else. People have a public face and a private face.

I'm pretty much a character-driven film director and my movies are smaller. I don't do a lot of coverage. I use lots of master shots.

As a director you have to be careful you don't over-design the film. You have to be careful that the period aspect does not take over.

Like Joseph Mitchell, I would scour the streets of New York and find little pieces of what other people think of as junk - and collect it.

Every role is approached in exactly the same way, you have to make it believable and that's all. Acting is really serious, like, pretending really hard.

I didn't know you had to change diapers so often. I couldn't believe it - we must change them 10 times a day - each. So that's 20 diapers a piece a day.

But usually I'll wake up and start writing about nine o'clock. I'll probably write for about three hours, and I'll do that over the next month and a half.

My partner, Beth Alexander, and I want to produce smaller films, but commercially viable films that will enable me to make the kinds of movies I want to make.

Ripe bananas are the mark of a good produce section. A good produce section is the mark of a superior grocery store. A superior grocery store is the mark of a good man.

I've been playing the father of teenagers for years. People always thought that I was 40 when I was 26. Once you lose your hair, they're like "Oh! He's really old now."

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