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

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

I love directing – it’s always so involving, so challenging.

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.

I was always attracted to the past as a kid.

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

I never go overbudget on my movies.

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

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

I make time to write.

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

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

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 would rather just do the things I want to do.

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.

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

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

You gotta make the movie you want to make.

I’m a control freak. Totally.

I write in the mornings. During my down time.

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

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.

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

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.

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.

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

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

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

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

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

I was dissatisfied just being an actor.

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.

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.