I can talk to execs very clearly, very plainly. I don't get nervous in front of them anymore.

I think only the movies you do remember are the films you had an emotional connection to.

We have so many films that we can fit into the slate a year, and we spend $100 million on those films in order to make $400 million dollars. We don't spend $20 million in hopes of eking out $40 million.

Nature is the purest thing we can touch and observe. It can be the most beautiful and also the most devastating.

Financing for 'Shotgun Stories' was initiated with money from close friends and family. This is where the money to go into production came from. After production, a company called 'Upload Films' came on board and provided post-production funds and services. In both instances, people were taking a gamble on us.

I think too often in films, people think endings are a summation of plot, and I don't like that. Because once you know where you're going as an audience member, then it's like a video game. You're just waiting for them to get through the levels and beat the bad guy. And I just think that's boring.

I think plot is very overrated. Plot is obviously necessary, but what I really care about is emotionally affecting the audience. Having a thought myself and then an emotional experience myself, somehow transferring that to the audience.

With 'Midnight Special,' the sound was used as a narrative construct. The audience is looking in one direction when a sound suddenly erupts from the other direction.

I've only seen one snake out in the wilderness, not behind glass, and I froze. I literally couldn't move. So to say I have a fear of snakes would be true.

I wrote 'Mud' for Matthew McConaughey and had never met him.

Definitely when you give a script to an actor, it's like dropping a capsule in water and the fizzing starts. That's when the thing starts to live and breathe.

Making movies is really hard. It's a very complex process, with many, many variables.

If I can drive down the road in my car and listen to XM satellite, and when a song gets beamed into my car, it can tell me who wrote the song and what the damn lyrics are, why, when you broadcast a digital signal of a film, can't it speak to your television to set up a list of settings to show the film in the way that it was meant to be shown?

I first read 'Tom Sawyer' when I was in 8th grade, 13 years old. I realised since that Mark Twain just bottled what it felt like to be a child.

My first job in the film business was working as a production assistant, and then a production manager on a documentary about Townes Van Zandt.

'Indiana Jones' was me growing up. I could quote lines from 'Tango and Cash' as much as I could quote lines from 'The Searchers'.

It's amazing how far you can get into a plot before you figure out what you're doing.

I was always interested in creative writing growing up. From junior high on, I was writing short stories. I also grew up watching movies. My father would take me to everything. Most weeks, I could open the paper having seen every movie listed.

Steven Spielberg had a tremendous influence on me through his early stuff. 'E.T.', 'Close Encounters of the Third Kind' - 'Jaws,' I think, is one of the most beautifully directed films ever.

I think we're so advanced when it comes to watching narrative material. I mean, it's all we do is consume content all day long. So when a character walks onscreen, you immediately start making connections for that character: Is that a good guy? Is that a bad guy?

I grew up in Arkansas, and I went to Little Rock Central High, which was the site of a desegregation crisis in '57. I graduated in '97.

It took me a year just to edit 'Shotgun Stories.' Actually, it took me two years to edit 'Shotgun Stories.'

The real cost is always more than just the money you shell out.

People ask me about past projects I've worked on, and other things; I'm just really bad at lying. I have a bad poker face, so I just try to tell people how I'm feeling in the moment and really what I was trying to do.