“If you look at the types of directors out there, I’m not as weird as most of them.”

Particularly with middle-class people, self-absorption is a struggle.

I think people think filmmaking is fun, but I’ve never thought that. For me it’s always been a lot of work and pain and stress.

The showrunner relationship in television is what the director relationship in film, there’s really no more important relationship.

In Kurdistan, theres a lot of hardship – a lot of wars, a lot of bitter and difficult lifestyles. And witnessing all those made me a director.

There’s a whole system in Hollywood where the director never speaks to the studio, but I like to engage them in a discussion. I listen.

The first cut I do is usually between five and 10 minutes shorter then the cut that we release.

Casting directors now just see me as the hard-core sniper or prison guard.

I’m an unusual director in that my cut is usually shorter then the final released film. I like short films.

If the United States is to produce a nation of investors-as we must if we are to gain financial world-leadership-it is imperative that boards of directors be so constituted as to adequately represent the interests and inspire the complete confidence of investors of moderate substance.

Everyone can do a character the way they want to do it, unless the director tells them not to, which isn’t very common.