pick one job and delegate all the other tasks.

The worst advice was to start a record label when I wanted to be a musician. It was smart advice. It could have made me more money, but it did not inspire me.

Right now, we need writers who know the difference between production of a market commodity and the practice of an art. Developing written material to suit sales strategies in order to maximise corporate profit and advertising revenue is not the same thing as responsible book publishing or authorship.

But my own mottos are, “Don’t imagine for a moment that you’re going to be able to express yourself.” ... And most aspiring artists think, “I have something to say.”

An idea comes. Scripts are organised ideas. When you read a script, it comes alive in your head. And that aliveness in the head is like seeing it and hearing it and knowing it. Or if an idea comes from outside, boom, you catch it in your brain and you see it and you hear it, and you know it. You sometimes fall in love with these things. All you do in cinema is translate those ideas. They talk to you, so you just stay true to the idea and translate it as good as you can.

Always have final cut

Most people, these days, they don’t even believe in reincarnation. They’d say, you only go around once.

Well, my family moved to Alexandria, Virginia from Boise, Idaho when I was in the eighth grade. Pretty soon after that, one night, on the front lawn of my girlfriend’s house, I met a boy named Toby Keeler, who went to a private school. He told me his father was a painter. At first I thought he meant a house painter, but then he said, “No, fine art painter” and a bomb went off in my head. In that millisecond, I only wanted to be a painter.

Transcendental Meditation, it’s obviously the most important thing to do day in and day out. Transcending is the key to a better and better life, and this idea is catching on more and more in the world.

But there’s always a way. Sometimes restrictions are a big blessing.