I always sensed instinctively from the earliest age that I was being lied to.
I don't see the arts as competitive at all. It was a better angel of my nature. Sports is zero-sum: winner, loser, demonstrable.
There's a long history of people who spent that $300,000 on their first film and weren't quite ready, and then they never did it again 'cause they were out of synch with where they were, and they would never raise that money again.
Hollywood has a way of sucking the world's talent to it.
When I saw 'subUrbia' on stage, I started having those feelings inside me. I saw it as a film, and I felt I knew the characters, or I was the characters. It really dredged up all this stuff in me that never went away.
I think you get in trouble if you make experimental big studio films.