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

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

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

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

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

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

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

You gotta make the movie you want to make.

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.

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.

It's more interesting because you get to research the history of the period, and all the different aesthetic elements that make a film, particularly this film, so stunning.

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.

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

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.

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

The constraints of melodrama can be a great blessing, because they demand that all the characters involved - as absurd and extreme as they may initially seem - must stay utterly rooted in their own reality, or the whole project collapses.

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

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.

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.

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